The European Council in the Euro-Crisis: Political Supremacy without Democratic Legitimacy?

While the European Council (EC) has for long held a leading role in the EU institutional structure, many analysts observed its further upgrade in the current Euro-crisis. Partly forced by a crisis that demanded ad hoc concrete political action, members of the EC readily accepted a new modus operandi that replaced traditional governance with actual government, especially concerning economic policy. Not only have the Heads of State or Government (HOSG) issued clear policy propositions, they have further concretely dictated and supervised national economic policy in several Member States. This shift in the EC’s conduct of EU politics raises several important questions on its democratic legitimacy. The nature of European Council negotiations, characterized by confidentiality and secrecy, is a particular challenge in light of democratic scrutiny. The European Parliament has so far not lived up to the hopes of being able to provide solid democratic legitimacy. National parliaments have therefore recently regained academic attention as possible sources of democratic legitimacy for EC decisions. In this paper, we want to investigate five different approaches to democratically scrutinizing the EC and assess them critically. Examining the conduct of negotiations in the European Council especially in the Euro-crisis, as well as national and the European Parliaments’ efforts to hold the HOSG accountable in this time-period, we will show that none of the currently applied approaches are sufficient for providing the EC with democratic legitimacy. Especially in light of shifting power relations in the EC and increasingly hierarchical, instead of consensual, negotiation styles and decision-making procedures, the de-central approach of national parliaments holding their HOSG to account cannot offer sufficient democratic control. Both, asymmetry of national parliaments’ scrutiny powers and the confidential conduct of EC negotiations jeopardize the efficiency of current efforts to provide democratic legitimacy to this central institution in EU politics.