The distribution of power among EU institutions: who wins under codecision and why?

Abstract

The codecision procedure was designed to change the distribution of power among the EU institutions. In theory, the codecision procedure, at least the amended version introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty that came into effect in 1999, weakened the Commission and placed the Parliament on an equal footing with the Council. We assess how the codecision procedure works in practice using data on the preferences of legislative actors on a large number of proposals negotiated between 1999 and 2009. We also test theoretical propositions derived from Schelling regarding the effects of policy agreement within each chamber on the relative bargaining success of the Council and EP. Our findings suggest that, in comparison to the consultation procedure, codecision has strengthened the EP and weakened the Commission.However, the Council holds certain bargaining advantages over the EP, and as a result the EP has not achieved parity with the Council under codecision.

The culture of trilogues

“…The quest to pin down the distributional impact of co-decision has generated several institutional analyses exploring inter-institutional power shifts (Häge and Kaeding 2007;Costa, Dehousse, and Trakalova 2011;Costello and Thomson 2013;Burns 2013), as well as intra-institutional power 'This is an electronic pre-publication (including pre-proofs) version of an article submitted to shifts (Yordanova 2009;Rasmussen 2011;Rasmussen and Reh 2013;Häge and Naurin 2013).…”

Passing the Scepter, not the Buck Long Arms in EU Climate Politics

“…Although the European Council is not part of this triangle, it is equally important for understanding EU policy-making. In providing political direction and determining the broad strategies for future EU policies, it has a decisive role in the proceedings prior to the actual policy-making process that takes place within the institutional triangle, a role that -as studies show -has actually increased in recent years (Costello & Thomson, 2013;Thomson, 2015;Bocquillon & Dobbels, 2014), and that was particularly important in EU climate politics before and after Copenhagen. Hereafter, we will focus on the Commission, the European Council, and the Parliament, and discuss their relative power in the EU policy-making process leading up to the decision about the 2030 targets.…”

Institutional and Policy Change in the European Parliament

“…Given that the EP often struggles to obtain the 376 votes necessary to reach an absolute majority, 5 the Council can be confident that its common position will be adopted (instead of falling back to the status quo, that is, no legislation). Therefore, when the EP is farther away than the Council from the status quo and, especially, when it is internally divided (both common circumstances), the Council still enjoys a structural advantage over the EP (Costello & Thomson 2013) . The different majorities that the EP needs to reach to amend or reject legislation place significant constraints on its negotiators (Figure 2.3).…”