Separation of Powers Failures: the EU Expert-executive Nexus

Expertise is coessential to the exercise of power in the European Union (EU), as elsewhere. It operates at the juncture of political and epistemic authority (Strassheim 2017) and contributes to both will formation and control. This chapter considers expertise as one of the ways in which the three branches exercise their power and control each other and asks: in what way(s) is each of the three branches empowered and/or disempowered by the availability and deployment of expertise? It identifies the executive as the ‘place of expertise’ in EU governance and considers how the other two branches have responded to the consolidation of the expert–executive nexus (Gornitzka and Holst 2015). The analysis focusses on three areas: the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU); trade; and migration. Starting from each of the three areas’ most emblematic configuration of the expert–executive nexus (the European Central Bank (ECB), the Commission and its expert groups, and Frontex), it considers the different modes and degrees to which the legislative and the judiciary engage with it. Findings yield a concerning picture, whereby the executive tends to monopolise expertise, encountering a very limited and erratic counterbalance from the other two branches. When it comes to expertise, the EU is an example of separation of powers failure. This has broader implications in so far as it undermines expertise’s possibility to effectively deploy its role in terms of both will-formation and control.