TY - JOUR A1 - Maricut-Akbik, Adina T1 - Contesting the European Central Bank in Banking Supervision:Accountability in Practice at the European Parliament JF - JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies N2 - The establishment of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) raised expectations regarding theability of the European Parliament (EP) to hold the European Central Bank (ECB) accountable forits decisions. This article examines the accountability interactions between the two institutions inthefirst years of the functioning of the SSM (2013–18). The focus is on the extent to which the EPcontests ECB supervisory decisions in practice through letters and public hearings. The analysisshows a frequently-used infrastructure of political accountability that is however limited in ensur-ing the contestation of ECB conduct in banking supervision. The study identifies problems withthe performance of the EP as an accountability forum and with the tight confidentiality rules ofthe SSM, which allow the ECB to silence contestation on many politically salient issues. Thefind-ings are based on an innovative analytical framework on the study of accountability interactions. KW - European Central Bank; European Parliament; accountability; single supervisory mecha-nism; political contestation Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13024 VL - 58 IS - 5 SP - 1199 EP - 1214 ER -