National Parliaments and EU Economic Governance. In Search of New Ways to Enhance Democratic Legitimacy

Author(s):  
Ton van den Brink
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 96-99
Author(s):  
Tomasz P. Woźniakowski ◽  
Aleksandra Maatsch ◽  
Eric Miklin

As a result of the euro crisis, EU economic governance has been reformed and EU institutions have gained new competences regarding national budgets, with the European Semester (the annual cycle of economic surveillance of the member states) being the most prominent example. With the Commission and the Council being the main actors, and the European Parliament playing only a minor role, a debate about the democratic legitimacy of the Semester and the role of national parliaments (NPs) in this regard has unfolded. This thematic issue, therefore, addresses the question of how parliamentary accountability of the European Semester has evolved: Have NPs met the challenge by adapting to the new situation in a way that allows them to hold the executive accountable? While the contributions to this thematic issue show significant variation across NPs, overall they reveal a rather pessimistic picture: Despite several institutional innovations concerning the reforms of internal rules and procedures, the rise of independent fiscal institutions, inter-parliamentary cooperation, and hearings with the European Commissioners, NPs have remained rather weak actors in EU economic governance also ten years after the Semester’s introduction. Whether recent changes linked to the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility introduced in response to the Covid-19 crisis will change the picture significantly remains to be examined.


2017 ◽  
Vol 239 ◽  
pp. R3-R13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Begg

EU Member States, particularly in the Euro Area, have been pushed to adopt more extensive and intrusive fiscal rules, but what is the evidence that the rules are succeeding? The EU level Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) has been – and remains – the most visible rule-book, but it has been complemented by a profusion of national rules and by new provisions on other sources of macroeconomic imbalance. Much of the analysis of rules has concentrated on their technical merits, but tends to neglect the political economy of compliance. This paper examines the latter, looking at compliance with fiscal rules at EU and Member State levels and at the rules-based mechanisms for curbing other macroeconomic imbalances. It concludes that politically driven implementation and enforcement shortcomings have been given too little attention, putting at risk the integrity and effectiveness of the rules.


Author(s):  
Gheorghe H. Popescu

The main objective of this chapter is to explore and describe the EU's management of the economic and financial crisis, the leading role of the European Council in economic governance, the governmental and parliamentary institutions involved in EU economic governance, and the democratic character of the new system of economic governance. Applying new conceptual and methodological approaches, this study advances to the next level research on the political relevance of EU-level coordination in the area of economic governance, the new governance of fiscal discipline, the dynamic of building sovereignty at the EU level, and the economic governance of the Euro area. This chapter discusses the major trends in scholarship about the evolution of EU economic governance, the changing decision-making agenda of EU economic governance, the deficiencies in EU economic governance exposed by the crisis, and the slowness of the European measures on the regulation and governance of finance. The authors is specifically interested in how previous research investigated the categorization and exercise of EU competences, the economic government of the Euro area, supranational modes of policymaking, and the tendency of EU economic governance towards intergovernmental policy coordination.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. e12578
Author(s):  
Nicos Souliotis ◽  
Alex Afouxenidis

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document