The current economic crisis affects various aspects of contemporary political systems. There is no doubt about the fact that some of the decisions of national governments in the times of the crisis are taken at the express request of supranational organizations and are evaluated not so much by the societies of these countries but by rating agencies or just supranational institutions. This leads on the one hand to undermining of the legitimacy of national institutions and therefore it interferes with the functioning of the mechanism of horizontal and vertical accountability. On the other hand, such a situation provides an excellent opportunity for governments to avoid responsibility. Consequently, this situation leads to a weakening of the accountability mechanisms because of the blurring of responsibility. First of all, mechanisms of vertical accountability cease functioning. Even though the ruling party is punished by not gaining re-election, citizens are aware that punished party in the election is not the only entity responsible for the situation. This in turn leads to loss of confidence in the whole democratic system. Therefore, the main focus in the present paper is to answer the question of whether the current efforts, especially in European countries, aimed at an improvement of the mechanisms of horizontal and vertical accountability make sense at all. Thus, whether for example, the proposal of reforms of the decision-making process or electoral systems made in various countries is doomed to fail, as the supranational element is not considered at all. The above mentioned analysis will be carried out not only at the theoretical level but also in the empirical dimension. The paper will present an analysis of the impact of the economic crisis on the mechanisms of accountability first of all on the example of Spain, both in terms of procedural and effects dimension.
