In the Aftermath of the Crisis: The EU Administrative System between Impediments and Momentum

Abstract

The European responses to the financial and public debt crisis have triggered a process of administrative reorganization and growth within two fundamental sectors of the EU, the internal market of financial services and the EMU. This paper argues that the process of reorganization and growth of the EU administrative machinery within the single financial market and the EMU is characterized by a number of inherent tensions. Four of them are prominent and refer, respectively, to the powers conferred to the satellite administrative bodies established in order to tackle the crisis, to the jurisdictions of the new administrations, to the degree of centralization which is sought within the new mechanisms for the implementation of EU laws and policies, to the accountability mechanisms. When assessed in the light of their capability to improve the EU administrative capacities, such tensions appear to be deeply ambivalent. On the one hand, they might operate as "fault lines" of the whole EU administrative machinery, destabilizing its functioning in two important fields of EU action. On the other hand, by pointing to a host of unsolved issues in EU administrative law, they provide an opportunity for opening a genuine institutional and scientific discussion on the ways in which the EU administrative system should be adjusted or reformed.