THE 2012 FINANCIAL REGULATION: BUILDING THE CATHEDRAL OF EU LEGITIMACY?
The quest for enhanced financial accountability is a by-product of the financial crisis that hits Europe since 2008. Attention to sound financial management and its links to overall EU legitimacy has skyrocketed from the vocabulary of clerks and auditors up to top-level strategic documents, includin...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Nicolae Titulescu University Publishing House
2014-05-01
|
| Series: | Challenges of the Knowledge Society |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://cks.univnt.ro/uploads/cks_2014_articles/index.php?dir=08_political_science_european_studies_and_IR%2F&download=CKS+2014_political_science_european_studies_and_IR_art.086.pdf |
| Summary: | The quest for enhanced financial accountability is a by-product of the financial crisis that hits Europe since 2008. Attention to sound financial management and its links to overall EU legitimacy has skyrocketed from the vocabulary of clerks and auditors up to top-level strategic documents, including recent Conclusions of the European Council. This trend evidences that the focus on democratic legitimacy in the European Union should shift away from the traditional input-output legitimacy dilemma and towards the so-called throughput or systemic legitimacy. Systemic legitimacy provides the citizen with assurances that the system (s)he is requested to trust is well-functioning and answerable to the people; however, the definition of its scope proves ellusive among scholars. This paper takes account of the relevant literature and concludes that financial accountability remains at the core of systemic legitimacy. From a legal perspective, financial accountability in the EU is incidentally mentioned in the Treaties, and further ensured by secondary legislation. The EU Financial Regulation, also known as the “EU Financial Bible” stands out from the legal framework governing financial management of the EU budget. Since its adoption in 1977, the EU Financial Regulation has been subject to two major revisions. The first one led to the adoption of Council Regulation 1605/2002 and represented then an attempt to regain citizens’ trust on financial accountability after the serious backlash brought about by the resignation of the Santer Commission in 1999. More recently, the Financial Regulation has been revamped through Regulation 966/2012 of the European Parliament and the Council. Following a qualitative and comparative approach, this paper highlights the main changes that have been introduced in the legal framework on financial management, with a view to assessing their potential contribution to improvement in financial accountability and, by ricochet, in the EU’s systemic legitimacy. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2068-7796 2068-7796 |