The European Union's growing accountability deficit threatens to undermine its legitimacy; accordingly, member states have agreed to negotiate a new set of Treaty changes in 2004. These essays consider various aspects of accountability and legitimacy in the European Union.

An examination of executive actors' accountability for EU economic decisions in the aftermath of the euro crisis.

Article 226 EC is the central mechanism of enforcement in the EC Treaty, and has remained unchanged since the original Treaty of Rome. It provides the European Commission, as guardian of the Treaty, with a broad power of policing Member States’ conduct. Article 226 has been traditionally characterised as an arena of secretive negotiation focused on the sole function of effective enforcement. This study seeks to move beyond this approach by characterising Article 226 as a multi-functional mechanism within the Treaty. It does this by examining the central mechanism of enforcement through the normative lenses of legitimacy, good administration and good governance. Centralised Enforcement, Legitimacy and Good Governance in the EU is interdisciplinary in nature, examining law in its political context. It focuses on how the institutions interact and react to competing policy pressures, and explores the tensions that lie at the heart of legitimacy in the actions of public actors by engaging with concepts such as democracy, legitimacy and good administration. Scholars and policy-makers whose work explores Article 226 will find this work especially relevant. It will also appeal to those who are interested in enforcement and regulation in the international/EU arena, as well as those whose work considers concepts such as good governance, legitimacy, and accountability in the EU. It is also relevant to scholars engaged in the study of institutions and processes of interaction and change.

Focusing on the EU, this volume, with a combination of theoretical perspectives and empirical research, examines the problems multilevel governance causes for democratic legitimacy by placing it in a comparative and theoretical context, and explore how challenges faced by the EU compare with those faced by traditional federal systems worldwide.

Following the financial and public debt crisis, the EU's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) has been under intense political scrutiny. The measures adopted in response to the crisis have granted additional powers to the EU (and national) authorities, the exercise of which can have massive implications for the economies of the Member States, financial institutions and, of course, citizens. The following questions arise: how can we hold accountable those institutions that are exercising power at the national and EU level? What is the appropriate level, type and degree of accountability and transparency that should be involved in the development of the EU's governance structures in the areas of fiscal and economic governance and the Banking Union? What is the role of parliaments and courts in holding those institutions accountable for the exercise of their duties? Is the revised EMU framework democratically legitimate? How can we bridge the gap between the citizens - and the institutions that represent them - and those institutions that are making these important decisions in the field of economic and monetary policy? This book principally examines the mechanisms for political and legal accountability in the EMU and the Banking Union. It examines the implications that the reforms of EU economic governance have had for the locus and strength of executive power in the Union, as well as the role of parliaments (and other political fora) and courts in holding the institutions acting in this area accountable for the exercise of their tasks. It further sets out several proposals regarding transparency, accountability, and legitimacy in the EMU.

The Real World of EU Accountability examines how the European Union operates in practice and how and where its various institutions are held to account for the decisions they take and the power they wield.

The Political Accountability of EU and US Independent Regulatory Agencies is an in-depth investigation on the law and practices of the political accountability arrangements of the 35 EU and 16 US independent agencies. The comparative analysis demonstrates similarities between the political accountability arsenals and challenges to political oversight in the EU and the US. The greatest differences are revealed in the organization of the political accountability of independent agencies, i.e., ‘excessive diversity in the EU vs. uniformity in the US’, and the design of accountability obligations. Based on comparative insights, the book concludes with three recommendations on how the EU agencies’ political accountability could be adjusted in the ongoing reform on agencies’ creation and operation.