A parliamentary assembly for the Eurozone?

Abstract

On 6 December 2017, the European Commission presented its policy package on ‘Completing Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union’. Some of the proposals it entails aim at improving the democratic accountability of the governance of the Eurozone. This paper examines how exactly this objective is supposed to be achieved, i.e. how national and European Parliaments are meant to be involved in this field. In doing so, it first considers the mechanisms that currently exist to this end and recalls some of the proposals previously made with the same goal, e.g. creation of a Eurozone sub-committee within the European Parliament or of a Eurozone parliament. Then, the proposals made by the Commission to enhance democratic accountability in the EMU are analysed, and it is contended that, overall, they are coherent with the content of the whole package, with previous statements, and with the interests of the EP. Yet, they appear insufficient, in particular because the involvement of national parliaments remains very limited.