Procedural vs substantive accountability in EMU governance: between payoffs and trade-offs

Abstract

This article introduces a new normative framework for analysing accountability in the European Union's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The framework is anchored in four normative 'goods' that accountability is supposed to ensure: openness, non-arbitrariness, effectiveness, and publicness. All of these can be achieved in a procedural or substantive way, depending on whether actors are held accountable for the quality of their decision-making processes or for the actual merit of their decisions. Transposed to EMU, this conceptualisation shows both the payoffs and trade-offs of prioritising procedural accountability. Using different examples across EMU governance, the article illustrates how current mechanisms of political, legal, and administrative accountability predominantly evaluate the procedures followed by EU institutions when performing their tasks. While such an approach can bring clarity, predictability, and autonomy for the actors involved, it distracts attention from the substantive assessment of EMU decisions. The article contributes to the EMU accountability literature by going beyond principalagent expectations of democratic control rooted in the nation-state or legal debates about principles for accountable behaviour found in EU Treaties. The EMU, and the EU more broadly, need a different perspective on accountability focused on generally-applicable standards for holding power to account.

The European Parliament as an Accountability Forum

“…Claeys and Domı ´nguez-Jime ´nez 2020; Lastra 2020; Whelan 2020). The 'appropriateness' of executive action can be judged in multiple ways -assessing for instance whether decisions have been transparent, non-arbitrary, effective, or advancing the public interest (Dawson and Maricut-Akbik 2020). In other words, the current allocation of MEPs into committees is not sufficient to achieve the goal of specialised oversight.…”

Differentiated Fiscal Surveillance and the Democratic Promise of Independent Fiscal Institutions in the Economic and Monetary Union

“…IFIs can fulfil two democratic functions (Moore 2014: 57) that are essential for making fiscal policy decisions a form of controlled interference in citizens’ lives. Firstly, by evaluating the long‐run sustainability of the budget and by assessing ex‐post and ex‐ante whether it meets the government’s objectives, the expertise of a fiscal council can inform political deliberation and deliver more substantive accountability (Dawson and Maricut‐Akbik 2020). Without a public debate on the objectives of fiscal policy, electoral mandates and majority voting in Parliaments alone cannot guarantee that decisions on the state’s finances are appropriately legitimated.…”

Models of Solidarity in the EMU. The Impact of COVID-19 After Weiss

“…Questioning the democratic credentials of ECB decision-making and their relation to ECB independence has, however, become a key aspect of EMU and EU institutional law scholarship. 133 This has included ways to increase transparency, 134 to move from procedural to more substantive forms of accountability, 135 to assess existing mechanisms of accountability (such as the Monetary dialogue with the European Parliament) 136 and to zoom in on particular (new) tasks of the ECB. 137 Although the trade-off between democratic accountability and independence (the latter sustained by a narrow mandate) has been challenged, 138 this still marks the discourse on ECB accountability.…”