Parliaments in Eu Economic Governance: Powers, Potential and Practice by Diane Fromage & Ton van Den Brink

Author:Diane Fromage & Ton van Den Brink [Fromage, Diane & Brink, Ton van Den]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367184476
Google: wb09vgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 42815302
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-02-25T11:58:07+00:00

5. Conclusion: The Banking Dialogue as model for the reform of the Monetary Dialogue?

As illustrated above, the SSM Regulation has established an original framework for the accountability of the ECB in its quality as supervisory authority in the Banking Union.

So far, national parliaments had not formally been included in the mechanisms designed to hold the ECB to account. Only the European Parliament had been involved. In the Banking Dialogue, national parliaments and the EP have arguably not been placed on an equal footing and it is the EP alone, together with the Council that shall ensure accountability. By contrast, national parliaments are ‘only’ to be informed and to be able to submit observations and questions as well as to organize hearings. Such difference is nevertheless justified given the attribution of this new competence to an EU institution, the ECB, and it contributes to fully clarifying the different institutional standing of the EP and national parliaments. These new accountability channels hence reinforce transparency – with the pitfalls highlighted above however – as they allow for parliamentary debates, and they contribute to enhanced legitimacy by formalizing the relationship between the ECB and national and European legislatures. Parliaments can rely on legally anchored mechanisms and are not dependent on the ECB’s willingness to engage with them.

The Banking Dialogue could open new avenues in the ECB’s and the EU’s quest for reinforced democratic accountability (and hence legitimacy) in that it could represent a model to be reproduced in the framework of the Monetary Dialogue. One could for instance imagine that the ECB and national parliaments regularly interact on an informal basis. The same soft powers of the national parliaments in the Banking Dialogue could also be attributed to them in the monetary field. This would imply that they receive the Annual report from the ECB directly and may subsequently issue comments or questions and invite ECB representatives for exchanges of views.

In this way, the informational asymmetry sometimes observable between parliaments and governments, as well as among parliaments themselves would be avoided. Thereby, the only obstacle to further parliamentary scrutiny would be national parliaments’ own lack of mobilization and not the absence of any clearly defined framework as is currently the case. At a time when the ECB’s policy in this framework is sometimes doubted -which gives rise to increased problems of democratic legitimacy- perhaps one way to remedy to these issues would indeed be to enhance throughput legitimacy by systematically involving national parliaments. This would indeed clearly reinforce the ‘awareness, publicity and understanding of EU monetary policy’ (Jančić 2017, 154). Admittedly, monetary policy is a competence that has been transferred to the EU level. However, it remains that the ECB’s decisions in this field have a serious and direct impact on the Member States (in particular since the ECB’s competences have been largely stretched) and thus exchanges between the ECB and national parliaments should also be organized in this domain. Such an evolution would not threaten the ECB’s independence since no procedure is ever binding.

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