The Difficult Role of Parliaments in the Reformed Governance of the EU Economic and Monetary Union

The point of departure is an assessment of this new reformed governance, particularly organised within the so-called ‘European Semester’. This governance was considered by the European Commission and the Member States’ governments to be the indispensable condition of a well-functioning Economic and Monetary Union, and it was also considered by a number of these governments to be the pre-condition of putting an official financial solidarity mechanism in place.

This assessment shows that the reformed governance reduces national parliaments’ legitimating and controlling role over EMU-related policy-making at national level, whereas the EP did not have a comparable role at EU level in the first place.