Parliamentary administrations: an important pillar in the parliamentary scrutiny of EU affairs

National Parliaments were given new powers of control in the most recent European Treaty, the Treaty of Lisbon. The aim was to bring EU issues closer to the citizens and to generate more political debate on a European Union that is often seen as being overly bureaucratic and technocratic. However, parliaments are not just composed of elected politicians – they also rely on a bureaucracy. Drawing on a recent paper in West European Politics, Anna-Lena Högenauer and Christine Neuhold ask to what extent parliamentary control of EU policy-making was performed by administrators, rather than elected politicians? And is the involvement of administrators a problem or in fact beneficial for parliaments?