Lauded in political discussions as a tool to boost national parliaments’ involvement in EU affairs, the Early Warning System (EWS) introduced by the Lisbon Treaty has received a rather frosty reception among academics. The EWS allows national parliaments to scrutinise draft legislation by the EU, yet the canon of empirical studies suggests that the system is rarely used and falls short of expectations. But what are the criteria against which we should measure the effectiveness of the EWS? In his article “Beyond subsidiarity: the indirect effects of the Early Warning Systems on national parliamentary scrutiny in European Union affairs” published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Eric Miklin argues that the EWS’s effects cannot be solely judged based on national parliaments’ use of formal powers provided by the system. Comparing post-Lisbon changes in EU scrutiny in the Austrian and Dutch lower chambers, Eric argues “that the EWS’s introduction has changed the role expectations directed towards parliaments and placed parliaments under normative pressure to live up to those expectations.” His analysis shows that post-Lisbon, both chambers have reformed internal practices on subsidiarity checks and increasingly attempted to shape their governments’ positions on EU issues.