This article aims to examine the effect of intra-institutional conflicts in the European Commission on the extent of changes made to legislative proposals in trilogue negotiations. We develop and ...test three hypotheses related to how conflicts within the Commission, namely that intra-institutional disagreements during policy formulation (h1), and potential conflicts with previous (h2) or subsequent (h3) colleges of commissioners, increase the number of amendments to the Commission’s proposal adopted in trilogues. To test our hypotheses, we use a new dataset measuring the number of changes between Commission proposals and adopted legislation for 216 legislative acts negotiated between 2012 and 2019 by means of text-mining techniques. It is important to note that we control for differences between the Commission’s proposals and the co-legislators’ positions in order to distinguish between an effect on preferences anticipation and on the negotiations proper. Our results indicate that intra-institutional conflicts affect the Commission’s anticipation of the co-legislators’ positions. The effect on its behaviour in trilogues, that is, after the legislative proposal has been tabled, is less clear. Regarding the latter, only the number of Directorates-General involved is significantly linked with the number of amendments tabled. These findings suggest that while intra-institutional disagreements affect the Commission’s role in trilogues, the range of preferences is more important than the intensity of conflicts.
For policies to be legitimate, both the policy process and the underlying reasons must be transparent to the public. In the EU, the lion’s share of legislation is nowadays negotiated in informal ...secluded meeting called trilogues. Therefore, presentation of the trilogues compromise by the rapporteur to the European Parliament (EP) plenary is, arguably, one of the few formal occasions for ‘transparency in process,’ i.e., public access to the details of actual interactions between policymakers. The aim of this article is thus to examine the extent to which rapporteurs are transparent about trilogue negotiations when presenting legislative compromises to the EP during plenary sessions, and to assess whether the extent of transparency is linked to the extent of conflict between legislative actors and to elements of the political context related to rapporteurs. To this purpose, we coded 176 rapporteur speeches and, on this basis, concluded that these speeches poorly discuss the trilogue negotiations. Interinstitutional negotiations are discussed in only 64% of cases, and even when they are, the extent of information about trilogues is generally small. While we do not find support for an effect of political conflicts, some characteristics linked with rapporteurs are significantly related to transparency in process of their speeches. This is the case for their political affiliation and their national culture of transparence.
Informal negotiations have become the norm in the European Union legislative process. Yet, researchers are divided over the effects of this change on the European Commission's ability to defend the ...content of its proposals from modifications by the co-legislators. This article addresses this puzzle by using a fine-grained measure of whether informal negotiations took place which includes trivial agreements, namely legislation adopted in first reading because the co-legislators agree on the content, as a specific category. The results suggest that informal negotiations do not lead to more changes to the Commission's proposals than the formal process. This calls for a better consideration of trivial agreements in studies of the European Union legislative process.
Trilogues are the main forum for legislative negotiation in the EU. In trilogues, each co-legislator is represented by negotiators, who therefore play a central role in the current EU legislative ...process. This paper examines whether trilogues enable negotiators therein to slack by deviating more from the mandates they receive when they disagree with their institutions. The extent of deviation is measured using text-mining techniques for 219 negotiations conducted between 2012 and 2018. As a main result, the analysis does not reveal evidence that deviation in trilogues is significantly linked to principal-agent disagreement, neither in the EP, nor in the Council. In other words, the extent of deviation in trilogues does not appear to be the result of negotiators defending positions that are not representative of those of their institutions. This result thus contributes allaying the normative concerns expressed regarding the non-representativity of trilogues compromises, and therefore of EU legislation.
Over the last 20 years, the political dynamics in EU legislative policy-making have fundamentally changed as trilogues have become the major forum for legislative negotiations. From this perspective, ...this article represents a first systematic review of the literature on trilogues by using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. In doing so, it demonstrates the impact of trilogues on EU legislative politics, both intra- and inter-institutionally, as well as the normative concerns they have raised. It also shows that trilogues do not yet constitute uniform practices. Further, this article identifies the limits of our knowledge and therefore avenues for future research to improve our understanding of EU legislative politics.
This article traces the origins of European legislation during the legislative policy-making process. It identifies three phases where parts of the text of legislative acts can be developed: (1) ...agenda-setting; (2) intra-institutional decision-making and (3) interinstitutional negotiations, depending on whether the content of the legislation originates respectively in the Commission proposal, the co-legislators' positions or trilogue negotiations. Using a newly developed text-mining technique which computes in which phase each word of a legislative act originally appears, the article examines the relative importance of each phase and explores how it is affected by interinstitutional conflict. Applying this method to 219 legislative acts adopted between 2012 and 2018, it finds that most EU legislation originates in the agenda-setting phase, and that the new content developed during trilogue negotiations is limited. However, the importance of the agenda-setting phase decreases in cases with high levels of interinstitutional conflict.
This article presents a newly developed 'deviation index' to measure, in a quantitative and standardized way, the extent to which the negotiators in trilogues (the rapporteur and the rotating ...Presidency) deviate from the instructions of the institutions they represent (respectively, the EP and the Council). Based on text-mining techniques, the index is applied to the entire set of trilogue decision-making processes in the 2012-2016 period (N = 111). The article then presents three examples of how the index can generate new insights about legislative policy-making in the EU. These empirical applications show that agents deviate more than minimally required to reach an inter-institutional compromise; that rapporteurs deviate in general more than Presidencies do; and that deviation is not affected by the support for the mandate or by the size of the agent.
Applying a principal‐agent perspective on trilogue negotiations, this article examines how the rapporteur and the Presidency, as agents of respectively the European Parliament and the Council, are ...able to reach a deal with their fellow agent while avoiding an involuntary defection among their principals. Despite these intra‐ and inter‐institutional constraints, early agreements can be concluded because agents execute two parallel tasks on behalf of their principals: representing them inter‐institutionally and acting as the deal‐facilitator intra‐institutionally. We identify three ways in which the agents can combine these two acts of delegation and conclude an early agreement: (1) creating a tied‐hand situation for themselves; (2) affecting the intra‐institutional coalition formation by bringing in allies from the other institution; and (3) actively searching for signals from the principals and the fellow agent on the zone of possible agreement. We illustrate these dynamics through a case study of the policy‐making process on the 2015 Decision on the Market Stability Reserve.
Parce qu'ils permettent aux députés européens d'exprimer publiquement et de confronter leurs positions sur les législations à adopter, les débats en plénière au Parlement européen constituent des ...espaces importants de politisation. Cependant, étant donné le rôle central des commissions dans le processus décisionnel du PE et les différences entre elles, la politisation des débats en plénière est susceptible de varier selon les commissions qui ont préparé les dossiers législatifs. De ce point de vue, le présent article vise à comparer la politisation des débats en fonction de la commission parlementaire responsable du dossier. En pratique, nous mesurons la politisation des débats à l'aune du nombre de députés qui y participent. Les résultats confirment que la politisation des débats législatifs diffère en fonction de la commission qui est chargée de préparer les dossiers débattus. Les débats à propos des dossiers venant de commissions qui ont des processus décisionnels plus conflictuels tendent à être plus politisés. Par contre, les résultats ne permettent pas de conclure que l'importance des enjeux traitées par une commission a un effet sur la politisation des débats en plénière sur ses dossiers.
How do members of regional parliaments engage in EU policymaking? This paper examines how and why members of the Walloon, Flemish and Brussels regional parliaments vary in their EU-contacting ...activities, by adapting a German survey. Belgium makes a relevant case, as the 'in foro interno, in foro externo' principle entitles regions to conduct foreign policy, including EU affairs in those areas they possess internal competency. Our data show that the level of EU-contacting activities of Belgian regional parliamentarians is overall low, mainly directed towards informational activities and taking place in the direct environment of the parliamentarians. The variation in EU-related activities is best explained by individual-level factors such as the perceived salience of Europe for their own careers, their perceived influence on EU policymaking and their position towards European integration.
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