The Economic and Monetary Union, the Crisis, and Political Accountability

Abstract

The EMU is one of the central policy fields of the European Union. Established in 1993 by the Maastricht Treaty, the EMU comprises a tangible symbol of European integration – the euro – present in the lives of millions of citizens across Europe. For countries that adopted the euro and formed the Eurozone, the economic, fiscal, and social impact of EMU policies is profound. Non-Eurozone economies are also affected by EMU decisions, albeit to a more limited extent. Yet despite the significant shift in decision-making powers from the national to the EU level entailed in the EMU, its architects did not establish corresponding mechanisms to hold relevant actors accountable for policy decisions in the field. The global economic and financial crisis of 2007–2008 triggered a prolonged sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone (henceforth the ‘euro crisis’) that forced a reckoning of the original EMU architecture. Since then, the institutional design and policy scope of EMU have expanded, while the accountability framework has been strengthened – especially when it comes to the role of the EP in scrutinising the decisions of different executive actors. To introduce the policy specifics of the book, this chapter provides an overview of the EMU and its political accountability structure. The starting point is the historical development of the EMU at the EU level, emphasising the institutional asymmetry between its economic and monetary policy arms. The reforms triggered by the euro crisis (roughly 2009–2014) are hence contextualised against the background of the systemic deficiencies of EMU design. Next, the chapter moves to discussing the accountability framework of EMU and, in particular, the characteristics of its political accountability mechanisms. Focusing on national parliaments and the EP, the chapter underlines the difficulties of holding executive actors accountable for EMU decisions. Since the euro crisis, the EP gained new scrutiny powers over both intergovernmental and supranational institutions in the EMU. The question