Jacques Delors Centre policy brief argues that sidelining European and national parliaments undermines political ownership and accountability.
An article in Der Spiegel cites a new policy brief by Lucas Guttenberg, Deputy Director of the Hertie School's Jacques Delors Centre and Hoai-Thu Nguyen, Policy Fellow at the Centre, saying that the distribution of the European Union's pandemic recovery fund requires greater involvement of EU parliaments to make it more democratic. Through the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), the European Commission will distribute 310 billion euros in additional EU spending to member states based on their Recovery and Resilience Plans (RRPs). The RRF also includes access to 250 billion euros in loans.
In "How to spend it right - A more democratic governance for the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility", Guttenberg and Nguyen argue that the decision-making process largely sidelines the European Parliament and national parliaments. "The approval of tens of billions of euros is not an administrative act, but a momentous political decision. The European Parliament must have a say in this," Der Spiegel quotes Guttenberg as saying. According to co-author Nguyen, "Legally, it would be possible to give the European Parliament a much stronger role in approving the payments from the recovery fund." The policy brief cites three key issues in the current RRF governance that would be addressed by engaging parliaments in the process: political ownership, accountability and democratic decision-making.
Read the article in Der Spiegel here.
Read the full Policy Brief on the Jacques Delors Centre website here.