The euro crisis has sparked changes in the EU's economic governance framework and a crisis of legitimacy across the union. While the institutional repercussions of the crisis have been studied before, the democratic impact at the national level has received much less attention. This paper aims to fill this gap, focusing on the procedural changes that the EU's new economic governance (NEG) framework has brought to national budgetary decision-making. Building upon the Varieties of Democracy framework, the paper adds empirical nuance and conceptual clarity to the notion of ‘throughput legitimacy’ and its components: openness, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability. Detailed case studies of post-crisis Austria, Italy and Portugal show that the NEG improved access to national budgetary decision-making and enhanced executive scrutiny, while excessive complexity remains the Achilles' heel of EU fiscal rules. We submit that these procedural changes are too meaningful to be overlooked in post-crisis debates about EU democracy.

中文翻译：

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欧盟的新经济治理框架和成员国的预算决策：吞吐量合法性的利弊？*

欧元危机引发了欧盟经济治理框架的变化和整个欧盟的合法性危机。虽然之前已经研究过危机的制度影响，但国家层面的民主影响却很少受到关注。本文旨在填补这一空白，重点关注欧盟新经济治理 (NEG) 框架为国家预算决策带来的程序变化。本文在民主的多样性框架的基础上，为“吞吐量合法性”及其组成部分：开放性、包容性、透明度和问责制增加了经验上的细微差别和概念上的清晰性。危机后奥地利、意大利和葡萄牙的详细案例研究表明，NEG 改善了获得国家预算决策的机会并加强了行政审查，而过度复杂性仍然是欧盟财政规则的致命弱点。我们认为，在危机后有关欧盟民主的辩论中，这些程序变化意义重大，不容忽视。