Gaston Moonen

Gaston Moonen, chief editor at the European Court of Auditors (ECA) and EU Fellow for the 2024-2025 year at the MacMillan Center of Yale University

As chief editor in the Directorate of the Presidency of the ECA I advise on general communication and liaison aspects and I am particularly responsible for the contents, format and editing of the ECA Journal - the public audit periodical that the ECA, besides its reports, publishes to bring policy and audit closer to policy makers, academics, auditors and citizens, covering various aspects and perspectives related to a (policy) theme. Prior to my current function I was Head of Cabinet for several ECA Members, auditor, and attaché in a cabinet. Regarding my academic background I studied respectively History, American Studies and International Relations.

My research at Yale University will be a comparative analysis of public accountability in the multi-level governance structure of the EU and the USA. It will focus on the concept of accountability and conditions that need to be met for proper accountability processes. I will further finetune the accountability scoreboard I developed so far, covering key aspects relevant for public policy implementation and accountability. This includes developing clear conditions used for the actual scoring for the accountability scoreboard. Democratic governance requires proper information on past performance. With this comparative analysis and scoreboard, I want to provide more insights and suggestions on what is needed to stimulate such high-quality information, which is also a key part of the multi-annual strategy of the ECA. Another aspect of my work at Yale will be to provide information on the EU in general and the ECA in particular by means of participation in seminars, conferences, etc., but also by providing lectures on accountability issues in the EU. In my work I have acquired a wide, yet also profound knowledge of EU policy issues in general and the accountability challenges related to them specifically. I also intend to focus on recent trends affecting accountability (AI, open data, polarisation, crisis management), engaging in discussions to open up new horizons on the EU and accountability aspects.