A Politically Accountable Executive After the Crisis? The European Commission in the Economic Dialogue

During the euro crisis, the European Commission assumed key responsibilities for the coordination of economic policies of European Union (EU) member states in the framework of the European Semester. While there is a lot of literature concerning the functioning and the implementation of this process, considerably less attention has been devoted to the scrutiny powers gained by the European Parliament in the so-called ‘Economic Dialogue.’ This paper investigates the functioning of the newly-established accountability mechanism by providing an analysis of the interactions between the European Commission and the European Parliament in the context of the European Semester. The focus is on how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) use the European Semester to contest the Commission’s economic and social policy decisions, and in turn, how the Commission responds to this contestation. The research is based on transcripts of public hearings with relevant Commissioners at the Parliament’s Committees for Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) and Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL), as well as on letters exchanged between the two institutions since the formal establishment of the Economic Dialogues in December 2011 until December 2018. The findings reveal a frequently-used infrastructure for political accountability that is however limited in ensuring the political accountability of the European Commission. The findings contribute to the broader understanding of the European Parliament’s recently acquired powers of scrutiny over the EU executive.