Background

Overseeing the executive and holding governments to account are part of parliaments' key functions in parliamentary democracies. Parliamentary oversight is part of the wider sphere of constitutional controls: the aim is to keep government acting within its limits, prevent any abuse of power, and protect fundamental liberties.

Oversight is essential in assessing whether:

Parliaments' capacities to oversee government activities has been researched extensively (see, for example, a comparative analysis of parliamentary oversight tools).

Parliamentary oversight comes in many forms. Typical oversight and scrutiny tools are committees of inquiry and special committees; parliamentary debates in committee and plenary; reports and resolutions; hearings and fact-finding missions; the review of appointments and power of censure; and parliamentary questions and interpellations. While parliamentary oversight is the norm, parliaments may sometimes have only limited control, for example in emergency circumstances such as during the COVID-19 pandemic.

European Parliament scrutiny of the European Commission

The European Parliament has an important scrutiny role in the EU framework, in that it exercises a function of political control, a power conferred on it by Article 14 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). This scrutiny role of Parliament enhances the democratic legitimacy of the EU as a whole and helps strengthen the transparency and accountability of the European Commission. Parliament's scrutiny powers have increased over time, in particular through Treaty changes, the conclusion of interinstitutional agreements, and amendments to Parliament's own rules of procedure. Increased scrutiny powers at the European level become particularly relevant in cases where executive powers are moved from the national to the European level, for example in the area of banking supervision.

Specific provisions in the EU Treaties explicitly and directly empower the European Parliament to exercise scrutiny of the European Commission. Such Treaty-based scrutiny powers include:

Within the remit of powers attributed to Parliament, its standing committees may also undertake investigations, such as through hearings, reports, and fact-finding missions. In this regard, the Committee on Petitions (PETI) deserves special mention. It examines petitions submitted by EU citizens or residents on issues directly affecting them that fall under EU competence (see Article 227 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, TFEU). These issues may reveal shortcomings in the application of EU law.

Ex-post evaluation: The European Parliament's implementation and monitoring work

The task of monitoring and enforcing EU law, including the transposition of directives, lies primarily with the European Commission as the guardian of the EU Treaties. The European Parliament has a secondary or complementary role ('supervising the supervisor') in that respect. One form of scrutiny is Parliament's annual activity and monitoring reports. They deal with a wide range of policies, including the application of EU law, the application of the subsidiarity principle, and human rights in the world, to name but a few. Some of these reports respond to the annual reports of other EU institutions and agencies, in particular the European Commission.

The European Parliament also takes an interest in the implementation of legislation. Parliament's implementation reports, first introduced in 2008, are central in the European Parliament evaluation system. Implementation reports evaluate how EU legislation is transposed into national law, and how it is implemented, applied and enforced in the Member States. Parliament uses its implementation reports to establish its position and provide input to the Commission's revision of legislation. In this respect, implementation reports have an agenda-setting function; their timing is therefore crucial. To strengthen the evidence-base of implementation reports, they are typically underpinned by evaluation studies prepared by Parliament's research service. More generally, since 2014, a dedicated Ex-post Evaluation Unit within Parliament's administration supports committees in their evaluation and implementation work.

Moreover, in November 2024, Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) set up a cross-committee network on monitoring the application of Union law. This demonstrates Parliament's keen interest in the proper implementation of EU policies and legislation – a point the Commission, for its part, is increasingly prioritising as well. This is evident, for instance, from the most recent (April 2026) Better Regulation reform and the work programmes of the von der Leyen II Commission.

Parliamentary oversight in times of crisis: COVID-19 pandemic

The system of checks and balances, of which parliamentary oversight is an integral part, was somewhat distorted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic required governments across Europe – in coordination with the European Commission – to take rapid executive action to tackle the public health crisis, unprecedented in its magnitude. Governments have used emergency legislation to adopt measures swiftly, thereby sidelining parliaments to some extent in decisionmaking and, partly, in oversight.

EPRS research shows that the participation of EU Member States' national parliaments in the management of the first wave of the pandemic differed widely. Such participation depended on the constitutional and legal arrangements used to contain the spread of COVID-19, and the extent to which they provided for some kind of parliamentary participation or oversight over the measures adopted at a fast pace. In all the Member States that declared a constitutional state of emergency, except Estonia and Slovakia, the national parliament participated in the decision to declare or to prolong the emergency.

According to a comparative analysis, parliaments in Europe have followed 'a realistic and incremental approach to ensure continuity of executive oversight, prioritising the mechanisms that they deemed to be strategic and also feasible in terms of logistical arrangements'.

Other research shows that parliaments in the EU and beyond were better able to fulfil their oversight roles in states with higher-quality democracy and where constitutional and procedural rules provide more space for parliamentary scrutiny. While the checks and balances of coalition governments 'have acted as a break on attempts to marginalise parliaments', evidence finds that governments controlled by a single party often attempted to bypass legislative oversight.