Democratic Accountability and EU Governance: The EEAS and the Role of the European Parliament

Abstract

This chapter focuses on democratic accountability and parliamentary control of the European External Action Service (EEAS). It provides an overview of relevant academic literature on democratic accountability, outlining various models potentially offering enhanced accountability for EU external relations in general and the EEAS specifically (Batora, 2010; Lavenex, 2013). The chapter describes how the EEAS, a permanent diplomatic service with headquarters in Brussels and EU delegations around the world, is currently subjected to democratic scrutiny and European parliamentary control, yet questions whether these are adequate. There are newly emerging mechanisms of democratic accountability and parliamentary control (Furness, 2013; Raube, 2012) resulting from the Lisbon Treaty, yet while these represent a further level of empowerment and control by the European Parliament and while they transform EU governance in general, there remain questions about whether the transformations adequately respond to the challenges of the new EU diplomacy. ‘Incomplete contracting’, whereby ‘open-ended’ treaty provisions engender further clarification and interpretation in practice (see below; Mattli and Stone Sweet, 2012) is a case in point. The EU Treaties have long contained an ‘ex ante indeterminism’, but the European Parliament is now introducing informal ‘ex post’ rules of accountability previously unforeseen in some areas of the treaties.