Accountability challenges in EU economic governance? Parliamentary scrutiny of the European Semester

This paper sets out to address to what extent and how national parliaments scrutinize the European Semester process. My central argument is that the European semester constitutes a complex regime of different policy-making modes, which poses severe challenges for effective parliamentary scrutiny of the process. Through paired comparison between two Nordic parliaments and the Spanish parliament, I identify a number of accountability challenges in the scrutiny of the European Semester. Although we should expect that parliaments of euro countries are more motivated for scrutinizing the European Semester as the process has stronger implications for national budgetary policy, the findings show the importance of formal monitoring capabilities. Thus, the ability to counteract the accountability challenges of the European Semester is not equal across parliamentary chambers of the EU leading to a reinforcement of existing differences of parliamentary involvement in EU policy-making.