Scientific Coordinator: Assoc.Prof. Triantafyllia Lina Papadopoulou
Coordination: ΑUTH
ESPA 2014-2020, Operational Program Human Resources Development and Lifelong Learning, co-financed by Greece and the European Union, code OPS: 5050761, program number 99081
Duration: 1st of May 2020 – 31st of July 2021
Researchers :Menelaos Markakis, Charikleia Kafka
The enhancement of the Eurozone, pursued through the transferring of important economic policy prerogatives to supranational institutions, implies increasing restrictions on the exercise of national economic sovereignty. Meanwhile, the adoption of the intergovernmental approach, mainly by building a system of important decision-making beyond the framework of the European Treaties, results in the strengthening of executive power, the reduction of the role of parliaments (national and european) and the decrease of equality of States in practice which, however, is an operating condition of the Union. Furthermore, bodies of a technocratic nature, nontransparent in their functioning and democratically uncontrolled, are equipped with political prerogatives. Consequently, the well-known long-standing EU deficit of democracy, which seemed to have been tackled, is once again amplified as it expands into the neural sector of the economy. Thus, citizens fail to condemn or reward by their vote those who make political decisions. This new decision-making system is therefore overwhelmed by a lack of democratic legitimacy and accountability (input legitimacy) on the one hand, and transparency by the Union institutions and agencies (throughput legitimacy) on the other. It is moreover doubtful, especially in view of the persistent austerity in many States, if these two structural deficits can be remedied solely regarding their turnout (output legitimacy). The rising question is what the institutional architecture of the new European economic governance and the reformed eurozone could be, so that efficiency and democracy coexist without undermining each other.