The European Banking Union: its Impact on the EU and its Member States, and on Accountability Standards

ended

The economic and financial crisis that hit Europe a decade ago showed that the rules in force in the European Union (EU) could not cope with a banking and debt crisis appropriately. To tackle this problem, the European Banking Union (EBU) was established (2013), leading to the EU gaining competences in bank supervision and bank resolution. Yet, the creation of the EBU has numerous and multi-dimensional consequences for both the EU and its Member States. This project aims to examine those consequences. Taking France, Germany and Italy as representative case studies, it firstly analyses the impact that the EBU’s creation has had on the institutional balance at national level. Secondly, it considers its impact on the EU’s institutional framework, and in particular the consequences for the European Central Bank as well as specifically-created agencies and bodies such as the European Banking Authority. Thirdly, this project examines the EBU’s impact from a multilevel perspective, assessing whether accountability is sufficiently guaranteed or whether any gaps have emerged. Indeed, as shown by the crisis, bank failures have very significant consequences for Member States’ economies and tax payers’ money, which means that the transfer of bank supervision and resolution to the EU arguably requires high(er) levels of administrative accountability (i.e. auditing control), as well as judicial (i.e. judicial review) and democratic accountability. This project analyses these three types of accountability both as stand-alone issues and overlapping concerns. In employing a unique combination of legal and political science methods, while being informed by (political) economic research, and in addressing an emerging but under-researched topic, this project is original and will contribute greatly to making the EBU less obscure to citizens and stakeholders, while informing on-going reform discussions.