The Economic Dialogue: An Effective Accountability Tool?

This paper examines the implementation of the economic dialogue in the European Parliament (EP), which was introduced in 2011 to increase the EP’s oversight powers in economic governance. The EP fought tooth and nail to include the procedure in the Six-Pack and Two-Pack. One thing, however, is to acquire new de jure scrutiny powers; another is how it is working in practice. In this paper, I analyse how active and diligently MEPs use their newly acquired oversight powers in practice. This is done through a systematic analysis of all hearings with member state in the EP’s Committee on Monetary and Economic Affairs since 2012, using a novel dataset on MEPs’ activity and questions asked during hearings. I show that MEPs are most active in hearings when (1) countries under scrutiny have received financial assistance from the EU, (2) their own member state is under scrutiny, and (3) when MEPs are policy experts. Only a few MEPs are, however, able to ask pertinent questions to member states with parliamentary questions often being patchy and focused on a limited number of politically salient issues.