Towards A Genuine EMU: Democratic Legitimacy and Accountability

The Fourth Pillar of a Genuine EMU

Democratic Legitimacy and Accountability

BrigidLaffan

Professor of European Politics

University College Dublin

Introduction

The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, was mandated by the European Council to work together with the Presidents of the other European institutions to draft a report on the building blocks necessary for a genuine EMU. The mandate reflected the conviction on the part of Europe’s Heads of State and Government (HoSG) that the future of the euro required further institutional and policy development to ensure its long-term sustainability. The Van Rompuy report submitted to the European Council in June 2012 identified four building blocks; integrated financial, budgetary and economic policy frameworks buttressed by the necessary democratic legitimacy and accountability. The inclusion of the fourth pillar on political integration stemmed from an understanding that the development of the other three pillars would mark a step change in the degree to which the member states, at least in the Euro area, would further pooltheir sovereignty and that such a step change would not be stable without adequate democratic underpinning. The need for strong mechanisms of democratic legitimacy and accountability was re-affirmed by the HoSG in the Conclusions of the European Council meetings held in October and December 2012.

Legitimacy and Accountability

Legitimacy and accountability lie at the heart of democratic politics. Constructing mechanisms for the necessary democratic legitimacy and accountability of the next phase of EMU is challenging because the EU represents a compound multi-level polity that is more than an international organization but less than a state. The EU consists of 27 democratic states that have voluntarily agreed to pool their sovereignty but in so doing must preserve the democratic character of their domestic political systems. There is no easily identifiable institutional or procedural fix. While institutions and procedures matter, the key challenge lies in the quality of politics in the multilevel system. In exploring the challenge, it is vital to explore what might be fostered at EU level but also at the domestic level. The goal is to make the multi-level system work in ways that will be perceived by Europe’s citizens as legitimate and accountable.This necessitates enriching the quality of politics at EU level and bringing ‘outside’ views into the domestic. These views are no longer foreign but not domestic either.

The EU cannot become a scaled up version of the nation state. It must seek imaginative and innovative ways of enhancing the democratic fabric of the multi-level system. Accountability is a sub-set of legitimacy as the holding to account contributes to the legitimacy of a political system. In exploring legitimacy it is useful to distinguish between ‘input legitimacy’ and ‘output legitimacy’. Input oriented legitimacy rests on the participation of citizens in politicsand their subsequent representation in politics(government of the people and by the people). The main participatory and representative mechanism is elections. Political parties offer policy programmes to the electorate which in turn delivers a mandate to govern at national level and a mandate to be represented indirectly in the Council/European Council and directly in EP at EU level. Input legitimacy is not just about giving voice to the people but also about responsiveness to the people. Output oriented legitimacy, on the other hand, rests on the performance of governments/public authorities in solving the problems that they confront (government for the people). All political systems rely on a mixture of input and output oriented legitimacy. Traditionally the EU relied on output legitimacy which has been weakened by the euro crisis and has always struggled with input legitimacy.

In order to achieve long-term sustainability,the EU but more particularly the Euro area, must regain output legitimacy but this is unlikely to prove adequate in the long term. Governing parties in Europe are faced not just with the challenge of representative and responsive government but also responsible government. The Euro crisis and the system of economic governance that is evolving has strengthened the need for responsibility to partners, to the ‘common concern’ of the member states, and places further limits on the freedom of governments to respond to their electorates. Euro states are answerable to their peers and must be dependable and trustworthy in their conduct of policies that may affect the euro area.

Issues for Consideration

I: Parliamentary Accountability

The EU has two levels of parliamentary accountability, the EU level and the national level. The European parliament has evolved from a Cinderella institution into a central player in the Union’s legislative process. The role of national parliaments has also been enhanced in successive treaty negotiations. The roles and practices of both parliamentary levels do not yet amount to a comprehensive system of parliamentary accountability in the EU.

Questions

  1. What role should the EP have in monitoring and reviewing the emerging system of economic governance?
  2. How can the EP enrich the debate on the choices facing Europe in terms of prosperity, equity and fairness?
  3. What can be done to strengthen the political groups in the EP so that they have greater organizational and intellectual capacity to participate in national political debates as European voices?
  4. Is there a need for an EU level standing committee of national budgetary and finance committees?
  5. How can national parliaments enrich the domestic debate on economic governance?
  6. How can the Commission be held to account for its role in monitoring and surveillance of national budgets? Should the Commission engage in dialogue with national parliamentary committees on its recommendations concerning national budgets?
  7. How should cooperation between the EP and national parliaments, as envisaged in the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance, be organised?
  8. Is there a risk that greater involvement of national parliaments will further constrain the capacity of member state governments to reach compromises at EU level?

II: Managing the Politics of Constrained Choice

One of the key lessons of the Euro crisis is that membership of the Euro requires a high level of fiscal prudence and co-responsibility within the euro area. The euro states have created a new regulatory and institutional framework for national budgetary and economic policy, one that encases them in a wider euro area framework of responsibility. The direction is towards more stringent surveillance, reinforced penalties and constraint. This amounts to more collective authority.Reciprocal responsibility as a member of the euro area reduces domestic budgetary and economic policy autonomy, alters the timing and cycle of budgetary preparation and brings the ‘outside’ in at an early stage of budgetary planning. The EU has become much more politicized and contested over the last 20 years and this will deepen as the EU or euro area exercises greater authority. National governments will not be able to contain politicization within executives or even parliaments.

Questions

  1. How can political parties, particularly governing parties, present and justify the politics of constrained choice to their electorates so as to ensure that publics are aware of the rationale behind the evolving system of economic governance and accept it as proportionate and legitimate?
  2. How can the EU and member states respond to the growth of populist challenger parties?
  3. How can political parties avoid scapegoating the EU and ‘Europe’ for unpopular policies and measures that have both an EU and domestic rationale?

III: Creating a European or Euro wide political space

Political space in Europe is highly fragmented and national elections remain the preeminent electoral contests in the member states. Competition for national office remains the key goal of political parties. Political groupings at EU level have been strengthened over the last twenty years but do not constitute a Europe wide party system. There is some evidence of the emergence of a European public sphere and European issues have become more salient in national politics. That said, political space at EU level remains fragmented.

Questions

  1. Should the 2014 European elections be used to enliven a European wide political space? How could this be done-through the nomination of the Commission President designate by party groupings?
  2. Does the direct election of the President of the Commission have merit?
  3. If governments are less responsive at national level because of the importance of reciprocal responsibility, how could the EU level become more responsive?
  4. Will it require Euro or EU wide taxes to create ‘genuine’ politics in the EU? Will electorates only become actively engaged in EU or Euro wide politics when representation is linked to taxation?

IV: Political Communication about Europe

EU institutions and procedures offer multiple channels for national governments and interest groups to input into EU policy making. Governments develop a narrative about their countries in the EU and the salience of the EU for them (positioning in the EU). Communication with domestic publics is less structured and more uneven. Political communication about Europe and the euro is essential if publics are going to understand and support the building of the other three euro pillars. Given the step change involved in the other pillars, all governments must find ways of communicating Europe to their publics in ways that acknowledge the undoubted complexities but also identify the challenges of interdependence in contemporary Europe.

Questions

  1. What are the available narratives that could or should be developed in relation to the EU but particularly the euro?
  2. Apart from national narratives, what is the EU and euro wide narrative or narratives?
  3. Who has responsibility for communicating the EU and the Euro?
  4. How can cross-national debate be organised at domestic level, reflecting ‘outside’ views that are no longer ‘foreign’ but not ‘domestic’ either?
  5. How best to handle the different audiences-domestic, partners, the international system?
  6. How can the media be encouraged to involve more cross-national voices in debates and reportage on European and euro zone affairs?