re:constitution
2021/ 2022

Kevin Fredy Hinterberger

Mobility Phase: Constitutional Court of Austria | European University Institute

Committees of Inquiry as an Effective Tool to Enhance Democracy and Fight Corruption? Comparing the European and Austrian Parliament

Photo: Joanna Scheffel

Kevin Fredy Hinterberger is an Expert on Asylum and Migration Law in the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour. He studied law in Vienna and Madrid (2010-2014). In 2015, he received a Doctoral Fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) for his doctoral thesis at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law of the University of Vienna (2016-2019). During this time, he completed research stays in Giessen (Germany) and Madrid (Spain). His thesis deals with regularisations of irregularly staying migrants and compares the existing regularisations established in the domestic laws of Austria, Germany and Spain (doi.org/10.5771/9783748902720). The English version will be published in 2022 with Nomos and Hart (FWF-funding PUB 828-G). He publishes widely on issues of Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Comparative Public Law, European and Austrian Migration and Asylum Law and International Refugee Law. He is teaching at the University of Vienna.

Committees of Inquiry as an Effective Tool to Enhance Democracy and Fight Corruption? Comparing the European and Austrian Parliament

Rule of Law and democracy are under pressure. A key challenge in this regard is political corruption. If government officials embezzle State money or government jobs are obtained through paying bribes, democratic procedures and the rule of law are weakened. One of the main democratic instruments to reveal political corruption are Parliamentary Committees of Inquiry (PCIs). Characteristically, PCIs are set up by the respective Parliament to hold executive actors politically accountable. Austria is a representative example as a PCI deals currently with highly charged issues. It investigates the Ibiza affair that led to the fall of the conservative-far-right ÖVP-FPÖ government in 2019. PCIs are guardians of the public interest. The function of parliamentary control is based on the principle of democracy and belongs to the rights of the political opposition. PCIs are part of the legislative branch and an inherent part of checks and balances. By analysing PCIs at the EU level and in Austria through the lens of checks and balances in a comparative manner, an identified gap in research can be filled. The analysis aims at identifying how PCIs have to be set up in order to be an effective tool to enhance democracy and fight corruption.