This chapter provides the volumes general conceptual framework. It begins by addressing why new approaches to accountability are needed, arguing that accountability literature has reached a stalemate as a result of an impasse between deductive and inductive approaches to accountability in the EU. It then argues that overcoming the stalemate requires developing a generalised framework of what accountability is for, deriving four accountability goods to be used in subsequent chapters. The chapter argues that each of the goods can be delivered in procedural or substantive ways, focusing either on the process by which decisions are made or the substantive worth of decisions themselves. The chapter concludes by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of both varieties of accountability before mapping out how the concepts will be applied across policy fields and institutions in subsequent chapters.

As the most powerful executive actor in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the Eurogroup has faced continuous demands to improve its accountability record since the euro crisis. One reform introduced to meet these demands were the Economic Dialogue – a regular exchange of views between the European Parliament and the President of the Eurogroup designed to ‘ensure greater transparency and accountability’ in the EMU. This chapter investigates the practical functioning of the Economic Dialogues with the Eurogroup between 2013 and the 2019 European Parliament elections. Applying the theoretical framework of the introduction, the purpose is to examine the extent to which the Parliament focuses on procedural or substantive accountability when questioning the Eurogroup President. Moreover, the chapter investigates the reasoning of parliamentary questions in line with the four accountability goods identified at the outset (openness, non-arbitrariness, effectiveness, and publicness). The findings show that Members of the European Parliament are eager to question the extent to which Eurogroup decisions are substantively open and effective, and to a lesser extent whether they are arbitrary or protect EU interests more generally. The analysis is based on fourteen transcripts of Economic Dialogues with the Eurogroup President, which took place between 2013 and 2019.

This chapter depicts the accountability relationship between the European Parliament and the European Commission in the framework of the European Semester. During the euro crisis, the introduction of the European Semester gave the Commission a stronger implementing role in the coordination of Member States’ economic, fiscal, and social policies. Subsequently, the Parliament gained the right to question the Commission on the Semester not only via letters but also in committee meetings known as ‘Economic Dialogues.’ During the period 2010-2019, Members of the European Parliament have shown diverse interests in the activities of the Commission in the European Semester – with few follow-up questions pushing on specific topics. Given the relationship between the two institutions in the EU political system, oversight focused on requests for the justification of decisions and demands to make concrete changes to policy priorities. For its part, the Commission engaged with most questions openly, albeit there was a clear tendency to defend its conduct and maintain previous courses of action – regardless of requests from the European Parliament.

This chapter describes the theoretical and methodological approach of the book. The starting point are definitions of accountability from the public administration literature, which connect oversight to the broader point of checks and balances in a democratic system. While oversight has been extensively theorised in political science through the lens of principal-agent theory, there are few systematic applications examining its effectiveness in practice. Narrowing down on parliamentary questions as an essential tool of legislative oversight, the chapter introduces a comprehensive analytical framework for the analysis of questions and answers in legislative-executive relationships. The framework includes clear criteria for establishing the effectiveness of oversight in practice based on the strength of the questions asked and the corresponding responsiveness of actors. The criteria are then combined to develop six possible scenarios of oversight interactions, ranging from ‘High control’ over the executive to ‘No control’. The chapter concludes with methodological considerations of the framework and the coding guide used for the empirical analysis.

This chapter provides an overview of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as the testing ground for the effectiveness of the European Parliament as an accountability forum. The first part describes the historical development of the EMU as well as the institutional and policy reforms introduced as a result of the euro crisis. The second part problematises the political accountability framework of the EMU before and after the crisis, focusing on national parliaments and the European Parliament in particular. Taking into account the Parliament’s new scrutiny powers acquired during the crisis, the chapter sets the scene for the subsequent case studies.

This chapter examines how the European Parliament oversees the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) and the Eurogroup in the framework of the Economic Dialogues. The two executive bodies are discussed together owing to their overlapping composition, including finance ministers of all Member States and of Eurozone countries respectively. During the period 2012-2019, the Economic Dialogues with the two institutions varied considerably: while interactions with ECOFIN focused on legislative priorities of the Council Presidency, oversight of the Eurogroup revolved around financial assistance programmes and surveillance of public finances in the Eurozone. Dialogues with the Eurogroup were thus both more intense and relevant for political accountability than Dialogues with ECOFIN. Moreover, despite recurrent criticism of the Eurogroup’s informality and secrecy of proceedings, the Eurogroup President had a higher degree of answerability to the European Parliament than the ECOFIN Presidency. Yet answerability failed to translate into political control by the European Parliament, as the Eurogroup was willing to justify and defend executive decisions but never change its conduct in response to parliamentary questions.

This chapter provides a comparison of the accountability interactions between the European Parliament and the four executive actors analysed in the book. Taking into account the expectations of the analytical framework, the first section shows that the Parliament has the strongest accountability record when it comes to overseeing the Eurogroup, followed by the Commission, the European Central Bank in banking supervision, and finally the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN). Nevertheless, there are important limitations even in the case of the Eurogroup, which is answerable but not politically responsive to the European Parliament as an accountability forum. The second section is forward-looking and examines the general outlook of the Parliament in overseeing the Economic and Monetary Union for the foreseeable future. Focusing on policy recommendations, the section outlines concrete ways to improve the performance of the European Parliament as an accountability forum and increase the responsiveness of executive actors. The final section provides insights into the broader implications of the book for the study of accountability in the EU’s multi-level system.

This chapter outlines the purpose and scope of the book. It starts by positioning the role of the European Parliament as an accountability forum in the EU political system. Since most studies on the topic focus on the European Parliament’s legislative and budgetary powers, there is little research on its performance as a political oversight body in different policy fields. The Economic and Monetary Union raises special concerns for democratic accountability due to the rapid expansion of executive powers at the EU level during the euro crisis. In this context, the European Parliament gained some competences to oversee EU executive actors in the framework of new instruments such as the Single Supervisory Mechanism and the European Semester. The introduction describes the new accountability relationships and how they will be studied from an empirical perspective. The analysis is shown to contribute to the academic literature on democratic accountability in the EU and parliamentary oversight more broadly.

This chapter presents the accountability relationship between the European Parliament and the European Central Bank (ECB) in the framework of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). The analysis covers the period from October 2013 ? when the SSM Regulation was adopted ? until April 2018. The findings show the establishment and functioning of a new infrastructure for political oversight that is however limited to ensuring the partial transparency of the ECB in banking supervision. Although Members of the European Parliament ask numerous questions about ECB supervisory decisions, political oversight remains ‘weak’ – focused on requests for information and justification of conduct. The emphasis on weaker oversight questions stems from the independence of the ECB in the EU political system and the secrecy requirements in banking supervision, which allow the ECB not to disclose specific information about supervised banks. For its part, the ECB is open to justifying its conduct and explaining its decisions to the European Parliament, but it rarely agrees to policy changes in response to parliamentary requests.