EU Fiscal Union and accountability

What is it about?

The euro crisis marked the start of the so-called ‘new European Union economic governance’. This new economic governance brings along different kinds of changes in the status of decision-making actors. Some of these changes involve power shifts, which can be categorised as either vertical or horizontal. Vertical power shifts transfer powers between different levels of government, usually from the national level to the European Union level. Horizontal power shifts transfer powers away from discretionary decision-making by governments to independent institutions. The new economic governance also implies a restriction in the discretionary decision-making power of governments by the imposition of policy rules. In this article, the accountability problems involved with these power shifts are analysed. It finds that, overall, the implementation process of the new economic governance has harmed accountability.

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