@article{WoźniakowskiMaatschMiklin, author = {Wo{\'{z}}niakowski, Tomasz P. and Maatsch, Aleksandra and Miklin, Eric}, title = {Rising to a Challenge? Ten Years of Parliamentary Accountability of the European Semester}, series = {Politics and Governance}, volume = {9}, journal = {Politics and Governance}, number = {3}, issn = {2183-2463}, doi = {10.17645/pag.v9i3.4690}, abstract = {As a result of the euro crisis, EU economic governance has been reformed and EU institutions have gained new competences regarding national budgets, with the European Semester (the annual cycle of economic surveillance of the member states) being the most prominent example. With the Commission and the Council being the main actors, and the European Parliament playing only a minor role, a debate about the democratic legitimacy of the Semester and the role of national parliaments (NPs) in this regard has unfolded. This thematic issue, therefore, addresses the question of how parliamentary accountability of the European Semester has evolved: Have NPs met the challenge by adapting to the new situation in a way that allows them to hold the executive accountable? While the contributions to this thematic issue show significant variation across NPs, overall they reveal a rather pessimistic picture: Despite several institutional innovations concerning the reforms of internal rules and procedures, the rise of independent fiscal institutions, inter-parliamentary cooperation, and hearings with the European Commissioners, NPs have remained rather weak actors in EU economic governance also ten years after the Semester's introduction. Whether recent changes linked to the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility introduced in response to the Covid-19 crisis will change the picture significantly remains to be examined.}, language = {en} } @article{Woźniakowski, author = {Wo{\'{z}}niakowski, Tomasz P.}, title = {Accountability in EU Economic Governance: European Commissioners in Polish Parliament}, series = {Politics and Governance}, volume = {9}, journal = {Politics and Governance}, number = {3}, issn = {2183-2463}, doi = {10.17645/pag.v9i3.4335}, abstract = {This article analyses the interactions between the members of the Polish parliament with the European commissioners in the context of the European Semester, the annual cycle of economic coordination. The Commission drafts crucial documents in this process which assess the implementation of the Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs): the Annual (Sustainable) Growth Survey and the Country Reports. The goal of this article is to assess how the Commission is held to account by a national parliament and how this affects the level of implementation of CSRs. The findings suggest that the Commission is accountable to this national parliament, even if the form of accountability taken is rather innovative and its policy impact limited, at both the EU (the CSRs tend to be immune to Members of [national] Parliament's contestation) and the national level, as the implementation of CSRs seems to be independent of the level of their scrutiny.}, language = {en} }