Democratic Accountability through Parliamentary Hearings: Revealing the Nature of the European Parliament’s Oversight of EU Agencies

European Parliament (EP) hearings are a core mechanism of parliamentary oversight of EU agencies. Still, the use of this mechanism by the EP remains largely understudied in extant literature. This constitutes an important research gap in a context where EP is one of the main principals of EU agencies and a key account-holder. This paper sets out to address this research gap: Drawing on a unique dataset of the minutes of all 1314 meetings held by the 12 parliamentary standing committees with oversight responsibilities during the eighth parliamentary term, we aim to increase the knowledge of the nature and extent of the EP’s oversight of EU agencies. To that end, the paper maps EP’s hearings of EU agencies and tests possible explanations for variations in oversight across parliamentary committees and EU agencies as well as investigating how the nature of oversight hearings varies (police patrol vs. fire alarm). Conventional wisdom originating from seminal US literature (McCubbins and Schwartz 1984) suggests that legislators should display strong preference for fire alarm oversight (event-driven oversight) as opposed to police patrol (routine, ongoing oversight) i.e., enacting oversight primarily when constituents ring the fire alarms – with the corollary that a variety of aspects will not capture parliamentary attention, resulting in “undersight” (Zegart 2010). The topic is of high relevance from a democratic accountability perspective. Hearings are a main parliamentary oversight mechanism towards EU agencies, gaining even further relevance in a context where extant literature into EP’s use of other oversight tools (such as parliamentary questions) point to systematic underuse, raising the prospect of serious accountability deficits.