Thread by @tineurope

Portugal’s government crisis is an interesting case for the interplay between domestic politics (on.ft.com/3EjJjas), the #EuropeanSemester draft budget plans and #NextGenEU more broadly.

Why? The national parliament is quite powerful in Economic Governance. A thread. 1/10

The “strength” of the 🇵🇹 parliament in the budget process itself is modest. Still it is not completely powerless like France or Ireland:
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Portugal had struggles over budgets in the Eurocrisis, internally and with the EU institutions, partly because its parliament is active in EU affairs. Examples are from 2011 and 2017:
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1) In March 2011, Prime Minister Sócrates resigned after he had lost a vote on his “austerity budget” theguardian.com/business/2011/… - Portugal received a bailout in May 2011.
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2) In late 2016, @EU_Commission found that the draft budget plan submitted by the 🇵🇹 government was at risk of non-compliance with the SGP provisions: significant deviation from the required adjustment path towards the MTO and non-compliance with the debt reduction benchmark
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In the #EuropeanSemester, Portugal is one of the very few countries that introduced specific procedures for parliamentary involvement at different stages of the process:
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The government must submit the Stability Programme to parliament before sending it to the European Commission. The European Scrutiny Act even provides for a plenary debate on it (in Q2).
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Plenary debates have been increasingly used as a powerful strategic tool for domestic politics – and to provide a public forum for scrutinising and debating EU affairs, not only, but particularly in Portugal.
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The 🇵🇹 government must also explain differences between its own macroeconomic and budgetary forecasts and those made by @EU_Commission in the #EuropeanSemester.
But there is no mechanism for ensuring the compliance of the Government with its duty to inform.
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For a detailed comparison of parliamentary scrutiny in the European Semester in 🇩🇪🇫🇷🇵🇹🇮🇪, see my @JEI_Publication article: tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
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Update on latest developments @POLITICOEurope politico.eu/article/portug…