Beyond Institutional Adaptation: Legislative Europeanisation and Parliamentary Attention to the EU in the Hungarian Parliament

Abstract

While studies of the formal adaptation of parliaments to the European Union (EU) have dominated legislative scholarship in the last two decades, there is a growing interest in the substantive impact of the EU on legislative production and parliamentary behaviour. We contribute to this research agenda by exploring the effects of Europeanisation on the national parliament of one democratically backsliding EU member state, Hungary. Comparing periods marked by Europhile and Eurosceptic parliamentary majorities between 2004 and 2018 shows that governmental attitudes towards the EU are not reflected in parliamentary law-making and that parliamentary attention is mainly influenced by the level of Europeanisation of the policy field. This shows that backsliding governments do not generally oppose greater integration and underscores the necessity to distinguish between rhetorical Euroscepticism and Eurosceptic legislative action.