Parliamentary Accountability of the European Central Bank: An Analysis of the ECB’s Inter-institutional Relations with the European Parliament

During the international financial crisis the European Central Bank (ECB) has become one of the key actors in re-shaping the EU economic and monetary governance structure. Although central banking is commonly assumed to perform best when being delegated beyond direct influence of politicians, independent central banks typically have considerably accountability obligations. In context of the EU, the European Parliament (EP), as the institution that derives its legitimacy directly from the citizens, plays a key role in holding the ECB to account. Given the emerged role of the ECB recently, the paper offers an mixed-method analysis of the ECB´s parliamentary accountability by assessing its four formalized channels with the EP: the reports of ECB’s presidents and other officials in the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and the plenary, the presentation of the ECB’s annual reports in Parliament, the ECB’s reply to written questions of Members of the EP, as well as informal discussions at expert level and the role of the EP in ECB’s Executive Board appointments. The findings on the evolution, recent developments and key features of ECB’s parliamentary accountability will allow for a broader comparison of parliamentary accountability of central banking and inter-institutional relations more generally with a particular focus on the EU´s economic, monetary and financial dimensions.