People's Power for the ECB?

The ECB has been developed as a major player in the Euro crisis. And in future, its role could even be further enhanced by somewhat better controlling that financial flows are more directed to the non-financial sectors. But its legitimacy basis as an expert institution is not designed for such tasks. A solution could be to provide the ECB leadership with a selected, representatively elected ‘small’ chamber of public representatives of the Euro member countries, which would be a democratic control of the far-reaching measures of the ECB.

The European Parliament, which at first seems the right candidate, is, however, less suitable. Most of all, because of the drastically unequal weighting of votes for a seat, it is also only imperfectly legitimized. A ‘Euro Economic Committee’ instead could be elected only for the very focus and could also be of a considerably smaller size. Those would then be deputies with a very high degree of visibility.

One could also restrict the mandate to about every two years in order to respond with a better authorization of the people to crises.  And finally, it would be appropriate for such a committee to provide uniform lists for the whole Euro zone in order to underline the transnational importance of a common currency. A strictly democratic feedback through an elected committee with the right to make ultimate decisions makes a significant difference to all the unrealistic economic dreams of allegedly purely fact-oriented expert meetings.