ABSTRACT
The European Central Bank (ECB) is clearly one of the most important institutions of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), while it is also the European Union's (EU) technocratic institution par excellence. To reflect on the special case of accountability of expert-based decision-making in the ECB, this chapter proceeds by discussing the specific concept of central bank independence and the particularities of expert-based decision-making in the ECB, as the world's most independent central bank. It explores the characteristics of the educational and occupational experience of the independent experts that are selected for the top of the ECB. More generally, experts in public institutions are increasingly trained in economics, which as a discipline offers measurement techniques claiming to provide decision-making criteria for most conceivable areas of public policy and social life. The transfer of expert knowledge into policy involves politics, and technocratic institutions like the ECB require accountability to secure legitimacy.
