The Commission in EU Policy Preparation

Abstract

Since the heyday of Jacques Delors, the Commission has been challenged by the rise of the European Council, the empowerment of the European Parliament and the creation of European agencies. However, while many scholars agree about the direction of change, there is disagreement about the extent to which the Commission's position has declined. A number of studies are sceptical, and we join this sceptical line. Our contribution is to focus on the Commission's role as a maker of both legislative and executive rules (implementing and delegated acts). These rules are all decided under complex inter-institutional procedures. But the Commission possesses the right of initiative in all procedures. We investigate how the Commission can use this first-mover advantage to influence EU policy. We establish a framework for understanding what strategic options the first-mover advantage entails and provide a first empirical illustration with a qualitative analysis of ten selected Commission proposals.

The institutional and political roots of complex policies: Evidence from the European Union

“…Yet, in practice, the principle of collegiality is often understood as a norm underlying the policy formulation process, not as a decision rule. Formally, also collegial cabinets eventually often decide by majority and given the fact that also the CoC – either explicitly or implicitly – decides on a simple majority basis, ‘there are plausibly limits to how far policies can drift from the median commissioner’ (Blom‐Hansen & Senninger, 2021, p. 633). While policies are drafted at the administrative level of the Commission, coordination across departments always takes place under the shadow of a potential majority vote in the CoC.…”

“…The more veto players enter the scene, however, the higher the uncertainty over the outcome of the legislative process and the stronger the pressure for the agenda‐setter to accommodate this uncertainty in its policy proposals by raising their complexity. In the EU, the Commission has a strong and institutionalized working relationship with the Council during the policy preparation phase, which reduces uncertainty significantly (Blom‐Hansen & Senninger, 2021). In contrast, however, the position of the EP often becomes clear much later in the legislative process and there is often also substantial uncertainty over who the lead negotiator (the rapporteur ) of the EP will be.…”

Power or Luck? The Limitations of the European Commission's Agenda Setting Power and Autonomous Policy Influence

“…9 This makes it difficult to determine whether the success of AWP policy priorities can be attributed to the Commission's independent agenda-setting power or to its 'luck'in 9 The majority of the AWPs do not provide full texts or information on the Commission's motivations, making it impossible to evaluate the extent to which inter-institutional agreement on the details of a policy proposal exists. We focus here on the existence of congruence in the prioritization of particular policy topics, though, the informational resources of the Commission, its unilateral control over what is included in the AWPs, and its ability to withdraw proposals make it unlikely that policy outcomes linked to AWP priorities would be antithetical to its preferences, even if they often fall short of its ideal outcome (Lupo, 2018;Blom-Hansen and Senninger, 2021).…”

“…Even though changing institutional structures and power dynamics in the EU constrain the Commission's de jure monopoly and strengthen the European Council and the European Parliament (Crombez and Hix, 2011; Rasmussen, 2012; Majone, 2014), the extent of this decline is still being debated in the literature (Bauer and Becker, 2014; Nugent and Rhinard, 2016; Egeberg and Trondal, 2017; Blom‐Hansen and Senninger, 2021). The ‘competence overlaps’ introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon complicates this picture even further (Thomson, 2011; Bocquillon and Dobbels, 2014), as Article 17(2) retains the Commission's prerogative to initiate legislation, but Article 15 grants the European Council new powers to ‘provide the Union with impetus and general political directions and priorities’ (Treaty on European Union [TEU]).…”

Do euro area institutions benefit the small member states?

“…Indeed, several Governing Council members considered this course of action as an indirect bailout (Wallace, 2015, 94), which the ECB in turn used to persuade governments to adopt structural reforms and intensify fiscal consolidation (Bini Smaghi, 2015). These actions culminated in President Draghi's 2012 pledge to do "whatever it takes" to prevent the euro's area collapse, including 3 Bauer and Becker, 2014;Blom-Hansen and Senninger, 2021;Carstensen and Schmidt, 2018;Crespy and Menz, 2015;Finke and Blom-Hansen, 2021;Nielsen and Smeets, 2018;Schmidt, 2015;Schön-Quinlivan and Scipioni, 2016. 4 Indeed, Baerg and Hallerberg (2016) provide empirical evidence that even the large member states do not get everything they want.…”