ABSTRACT
The worst financial crisis in the post-Second World War era erupted in the United States in 2007/2008 and soon spilled over to Europe, bringing into question some of the basic principles of the ‘common’ European model. Starting off as a financial crisis, it quickly turned out to be an overall governance issue for the European Union and its member states. The notions of legitimacy, reciprocity, sovereignty and collective action are now been debated in a new context. As the management of the crisis brought the national governments back on to the central stage of European policy making, most academic discussion focused on intergovernmental bargaining. This chapter looks in another direction and sets out to consider the role played by the European Parliament (EP) in managing Europe’s crisis, and to indicate whether the EP, as a transnational parliamentary institution, has had any impact on the debate about global financial management and in particular on the policies agreed upon for Europe, especially for the eurozone members.
