The Banking Union As Challenge or Virtue of Multi-Level Accountability?

This paper analyses the emerging multi-level accountability scheme in fiscal and economic policy-making in the European Union (EU), with a special emphasis on the recently established Banking Union. It follows the accountability debate in comparative public administration research and differentiates five ideal-types of accountability. With an empirical focus on parliamentary accountability and administrative accountability, this paper shows that new accountability forums such as the ‘inter-parliamentary conference for economic and fiscal governance’ are necessary and relevant elements of an accountability scheme in the EU as multi-level system. More importantly, however, they vary in their accountability relations to EU and national governmental actors, i.e. since parliaments as members of these forums differ in their capabilities, these forums are (a) dominated by a few parliaments and (b) often hold some EU and national governmental actors more into account than others.