Centralization of power in European Union: Is it only a matter of crisis?

The Treaty of Lisbon has formally integrated National Parliaments into EU institutional architecture through the introduction of the Early Warning Mechanism (EWM), a procedure of parliamentary control over subsidiarity. In the eyes of European Member States, this procedural innovation aims to contribute to the parlamentarisation of the decision-making process, and to attenuate the traditional democratic deficit. As a first step, we present the weak points of the EWM. We thus provide a study of its "ratio decidendi" (ultimate target), in order to understand the impact that such procedural innovations can effectively achieve with regard to the EU decision-making process. As a second step, we provide a more general interpretation of the empirical findings, by connecting the traditional problem of democracy at EU level with the constraints stemming from the European integration model adopting the functionalist Monnet method. In this stage we contend that, in the current EU structure of governance, democratic legitimacy and economic efficiency represent two separate objectives, where democracy mainly plays of discursive role formally legitimising EU policies in the eyes of the public opinion.