Unknown, Unchecked, Unchallenged—How the European Parliament Uses Its Rules of Procedure to Effect Constitutional Change

Abstract This Article contributes toward the growing body of literature addressing the burgeoning gap between normative and empirical accounts of constitutional change in the constitutional order of the European Union. It does so by shining a light on how the European Parliament, acting through its unilateral procedural rule making powers, has managed to wield its limited formal constitutional clout to alter the balance of powers between the core Union institutions, and to define its own role in the development of the political component to the EU’s constitutional culture. Given the European Parliament cannot be dissolved, and given there is at least the potential for such rule making power to be put to unconstitutional ends, the Article also considers the extent to which judicial oversight of this particular form of informal constitutional change is possible, and the form it may take should the validity of a particular procedural rule be challenged.