Accountable to Whom and How? Logics of Accountability in EU Governance during the Sovereign Debt Crisis

Who is entitled to hold supranational organisations accountable in the EU’s multi-level system? To answer this question, this study distinguishes between two logics of accountability in the EU: delegation relations and fiduciary relations. The article argues that these two logics of accountability correspond to different formal and informal control mechanisms. Whereas principal-agent relations are characterised by formal hierarchical, supervisory or legal accountability mechanisms, informal peer organisations and public reputational mechanisms predominate in the trustee-beneficiary logic. In order to illustrate the argument, I examine a delegation (European Commission-Council of Ministers) and a fiduciary (European Central Bank and Eurozone Member States) relation during the financial bailout assistance program. The results of this study show that accountability relationships can lead to higher or lower levels of ability to control agents or trustees depending on the type of oversight mechanisms available to principals or beneficiaries.