The euro crisis has brought about remarkable changes in the economic governance of the European Union (EU) and consequently in the ways the executives can be held to account. By focusing on the interactions between national parliament and government in Poland, the fifth-largest EU member state by population, this chapter discusses debates concerning the EU annual cycle of fiscal and economic surveillance - the European Semester, related in particular to its most important element – the Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs). The goal of this paper is to assess how parliamentary scrutiny affects the level of implementation of CSRs. The positions of Members of Parliament (MPs) towards CSRs and connected arguments expressed in parliamentary discussions are explained by applying an analytical framework of justification and contestation as two basic forms of accountability. On accountability dimension, most questions, which were asked by both majority and opposition MPs, fall within the justification category in which the demands for explanation or information from the representatives from two ministries responsible for finance and development were made. On the efficiency dimension, one can hardly see any link at all as the scrutiny of the CSRs has a limited impact on their implementation.

This chapter introduces the historical and political context for the analysis of the Polish republican discourse, including the constitutional arrangements of the Polish Kingdom and the rise of humanism in the fifteenth century. It presents the institutional background for the republican discourse that was provided by the rise of parliamentarism and several charters of rights and privileges issued by Polish kings in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. These developments greatly contributed to the growing role of active citizenship and the vision of a free commonwealth. Not only was the Polish Kingdom in the fifteenth century not becoming more centralised and absolutist, but it was heading towards an elective parliamentary monarchy within the Jagiellonian dynasty, with a growing role for the representative body of the Sejm. This alone was a fertile ground for the emergence of a republican discourse of liberty and res publica. The chapter also discusses how Renaissance humanism and its studia humanitatis opened up the Polish culture to the influence of Platonism, Aristotelianism, rhetoric and the interpretation of the works of Cicero, often mixed with elements of the scholastic tradition.