01 December 2011

Christopher Lord: Democratic rebalancing needed

The financial crisis has increased the power of some national parliaments and decreased that of others, depending entirely on the bargaining power of the Member State. This political inequality is just one of four reasons why it would be a mistake to rely exclusively on national parliaments to secure the democratic control of a more politically-integrated monetary union. A role for the European Parliament will also be needed.

Monetary union means combining with others to make policies that profoundly affect the lives of individuals, and not just the fortunes of states. Surely this implies at least some common responsibilities for those who end up in a disadvantaged state when things go wrong. Only a representative body at the European level can debate and define common responsibilities.

A second reason for not wanting to rely only on national parliaments is that they can provide only individual control, and not collective control, of all those who contribute to the governance of monetary union. Wherever decisions are made by many hands, the control of individual decision-makers can never add up to a fully adequate system of public control.

Monetary union needs a coordinator with sufficient powers to get all the other actors to anticipate the combined effects of their policies, who can then be held accountable for the exercise of those powers? Assuming that that coordinator cannot be the ECB (if it is to remain independent) or the European Council (if the sharks are not to remain in charge of the swimming pool), it can surely only be the Commission in its relationship to the Parliament.

Third, a form of accountability limited only to national parliaments could threaten the stability and effectiveness of the monetary union itself. Any one Member State, and therefore any national parliament, may have incentives to work the system: to impose negative externalities on others, to free-ride on the stabilising efforts of others, or, as the economists put it, to behave in morally hazardous ways.

Fourth, research shows that parliaments are influential in proportion to their ability to overcome asymmetries of information that favour the expert and executive bodies that they need to monitor. Undoubtedly, some national parliaments have great ability to accumulate expertise in monitoring monetary-union decisions. Yet this would be additional to what they have to do to scrutinise the regular flow of EU legislation. There has to be an opportunity cost to all of this: time spent on the scrutiny of EU matters is time not spent on domestic matters.

In contrast, the European Parliament has a full-time focus on EU matters, and accumulated expertise in following Union policies and institutions.

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