Accountability deficits in European ‘Comitology’ decision-making

The academic debate on comitology’s accountability is quite underdeveloped. On the one hand several authors claim that these committees suffer from an accountability deficit, but on the other hand this alleged deficit has not been looked into systematically. Whenever references to possible accountability deficits are made, these are made in the light of the legitimacy of the comitology system, and hence accountability as such is not looked into in depth (e.g. Demmke, 2000: 300-302; Schäfer, 1996: 22; Schäfer, 2000: 22-23; Larsson, 2003b: 169-171). Others, like Radaelli (1999) and Van Schendelen (2004), place the issue of accountability in the broader context of expert input into policy making. They argue that knowledge can be used politically, and that being an expert is part of a certain self-image that makes it hard to call people to account. However, they too do not present a systematic analysis of accountability.

With so many people echoing that there are accountability deficits in comitology, it is about time to look into this matter in depth. But first it should be demarcated what these concepts actually mean. What is accountability, and when is there a deficit? What are comitology committees, and why should accountability be relevant to them in the first place? What has past research found, and how can it help us to investigate this issue? These are the subjects this paper deals with. It will be argued that accountability deficits come under various guises. This is also illustrated by examples from interviews the author held with committee participants in order to test the ground for accountability research