Rising to a Challenge? Ten Years of Parliamentary Accountability of the European Semester

Tomasz P Woźniakowski,Aleksandra Maatsch,Eric Miklin

doi:10.17645/pag.v9i3.4690

Tomasz P Woźniakowski, Aleksandra Maatsch + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v9i3.4690

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Abstract

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.

Highlights

The eurozone crisis, starting in 2010, demonstrated that the monetary union’s initial institutional design which sought to maintain a balance between monetary inte‐ gration and policy diversity at the national level was not sustainable (Crum, 2013)
With the member states in the Councils and the European Commission being the main actors in the process, this system aims to provide the EU with the ability to pursue economic integration, steer national economies, and avoid imbalances while, at the same time, ensuring that member states’ governments remain in the driver’s seat
Ten years after the introduction of the European Semester (ES), this thematic issue addresses the question of how and to what extent this new system of EU economic governance has affected the process of parliamentarisation: Has it come to a end? Or have parliaments been able to ‘fight back’ (Raunio, 2000) once again? How have parliaments responded to the challenge posed through the ES—both institutionally and in their actual practices? And what have the results been for the EU’s parliamentary accountability?

Summary

Introduction

The eurozone crisis, starting in 2010, demonstrated that the monetary union’s initial institutional design which sought to maintain a balance between monetary inte‐ gration and policy diversity at the national level was not sustainable (Crum, 2013). With the member states in the Councils and the European Commission being the main actors in the process, this system aims to provide the EU with the ability to pursue economic integration, steer national economies, and avoid imbalances while, at the same time, ensuring that member states’ governments remain in the driver’s seat.

Results

Conclusion