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Its monopoly power to formulate policy proposals and set the European Union's (EU's) legislative agenda guarantees the European Commission considerable prominence in EU legislative studies. It is commonly conceptualized as a unitary actor, acting cohesively - often in its own supranational interest - in EU decision-making. Recent theoretical developments and empirical studies, however, cast doubt on this conceptualization. This paper takes up these matters and investigates the decision-making mechanisms and dynamics of the Commission's executive politics. Two case studies show that the formal division of power along portfolios puts formally responsible Commissioners in a privileged position to influence the content of legislative proposals in internal decision-making. This influence, however, is circumscribed by the opposition of other Commissioners. At least in the cases studied here, Commissioners' position-taking and conflict in internal decision-making follow a national and, to some extent, a sectoral rather than a partisan pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European regulatory networks (ERNs) constitute the main governance instrument for the informal co-ordination of public regulation at the European Union (EU) level. They are in charge of co-ordinating national regulators and ensuring the implementation of harmonized regulatory policies across the EU, while also offering sector-specific expertise to the Commission. To this aim, ERNs develop 'best practices' and benchmarking procedures in the form of standards, norms and guidelines to be adopted in member states. In this paper, we focus on the Committee of European Securities Regulators and examine the consequences of the policy-making structure of ERNs on the domestic adoption of standards. We find that the regulators of countries with larger financial industries tend to occupy more central positions in the network, especially among newer member states. In turn, network centrality is associated with a more prompt domestic adoption of standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agency creation at the European Union (EU) level differs from that at the national one. European regulatory agencies (ERAs) have limited formal powers and separation from other actors, resembling networks rather than stand-alone agencies. ERAs for economic regulation have been created later and in smaller numbers than for social regulation. Using a historical rational analysis, this paper argues that past delegations to other non-majoritarian institutions at the EU and national levels condition the creation of European agencies. The Commission has defended its existing role and powers, accepting ERAs when they aid its strategy to increase its own reach and ensuring that it has many controls over them. When member states have created independent regulatory agencies (IRAs), those IRAs have defended their autonomy and resisted strong ERAs. Formalized EU networks of IRAs have hindered the establishment of powerful ERAs and when created, ERAs have involved layering and conversion of those networks. Hence formal delegation to ERAs has been limited and uneven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European regulatory space has been expanding rapidly since the 1990s. The double movement towards a single market on the one hand and a Single European Regulatory Space on the other is evident almost everywhere. A new regulatory architecture is emerging and is expressed in the extension of regulatory capacities beyond the European Commission via two major forms of institutionalization: agencies and networks. This paper explores the politics and architecture of the institutionalization and administrative rationalization of the EU regulatory space and demonstrates (a) how agencies replace networks in a process that might best be called 'agencification'; (b) how agencies compete with networks and are often able to create, employ, and control them, creating what might best be called 'agencified networks'; and (c) how networking empowers agencies creating a new type of regulatory organization that might best be called a 'networked agency'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the main temporal factors impacting on the European Commission and sheds light on its particular relationship to time. By way of illustration, it discusses two relatively recent, but increasingly significant, features of the Commission's work: its planning and programming cycle and its use of impact assessments. These two techniques are at the core of the Commission's quest for exemplary management and of its endeavour to promote 'better regulation' principles. Taken together, they can transform EU policy-making and bring about a greater predictability and transparency of EU action. They cannot, however, fully capture the more political and discretionary role of the Commission, which must adapt to a diverse and changing EU agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the dramatic restructuring of the telecommunications sector during the 1980s and continuing through the present decade. The European Commission has worked hard for that restructuring, but the activities of the Commission can hardly be explained using the standard analytical repertoire found in international relations or comparative political research. After a look at the state of current integration theory, the article analyses the role of the Commission in the field of telecommunications taking the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) initiative as an example. It argues that the Commission has worked eagerly and successfully to extend its prerogative. The Commission's approach, however, has swung between the impulse to develop industrial policies under the active guidance of the Commission and the aim of liberalizing and deregulating markets. Policy-making in the Community is not straightforward, but takes place in a system of multi-level governance. Levels of policy-making and interdependence are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relation between policies, institutions and time by addressing the case of eastern enlargement policy and the European Commission. Our main question is how the special challenges and requirements of EU eastern enlargement policy impacted on the administrative level of the Commission, i.e. the level in charge of structuring, monitoring and steering the policy's implementation. We provide empirical data on institutional change in the Commission from the mid-1990s until 2004 and examine temporal categories at both the policy level and the institutional level. This analysis shows that - especially the temporal - requirements of enlargement policy drove the Commission to adapt its internal organization and time management; internal structures and procedures changed; actors were bound in a temporal grid. This allowed the mobilization of the actors and the in-time synchronization of their input. On the whole, our results open a new perspective on institutional change and time in the context of European governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The instruments of temporality played a key role in driving institutional action and political decision in the process of expansion of the European Union (EU) from 15 to 27 members. The Opinions made by the European Commission in 1997 on the countries of Central and Eastern Europe interpreted for the first time the 'Copenhagen criteria' for EU membership, and by using a 'medium-term' horizon introduced an important time-factor. The 'roadmap' developed by the Commission and approved by the Council of Ministers in 2000 effectively structured the decisive stages of the accession negotiations. In the 'battle of dates' with the applicant countries concerning the prospective timing of their accession, the EU refused to commit itself to a precise date until the last stages of the negotiations. Overall, it used time-factors in such a way that the existing members and the applicant countries were mobilized to reach a timely conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regarding the analysis of European economic policy choices since 2010, the literature has largely taken the path of intergovernmentalism, concluding that the member states were the key leaders of the economic and fiscal negotiations and relegating the Commission to the loser status. This article aims to open the black box of European economic policy-making through process tracing and embed a discussion on policy entrepreneurship by the Commission within an analysis of policy change in economic governance. It argues that the coupling of a high problem load with a high level of systemic ambiguity opens a window of opportunity for bottom–up entrepreneurship of the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs which is snuffed out by the political College and the member states when the problem load and the systemic ambiguity are low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar to many international public administrations (IPAs), the European Commission has been delegated a range of tasks related to budgeting. The Commission administration enjoys a high degree of autonomy in routine annual budget procedures leading to the adoption of the draft annual EU budgets; it also has a visible influence on inter-institutional budget negotiations. The present contribution analyses how the Commission administration has responded to growing pressures on the EU budget following the recent financial crisis, focusing on changes to its administrative organization and budgeting procedures. Both scholarship on the Commission and previous research on the administrative dimension of budgeting under stress suggest increased centralization as a key response. We find some evidence to support this expectation for the annual budget processes after 2010. Centralization was most pronounced during discussions on the 2014–2020 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF), when regular routines came under increased pressure in entangled budget negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I argue that the European financial market integration cannot be understood without the European Commission's gradual enforcement of supranational competition law for financial services. The conflict over the liberalization of public banks in Germany demonstrates how the Directorate General for Competition (DG COMP) deepened financial market integration through legal proceedings without the participation of the Council of Ministers. How could DG COMP prevail over the fierce resistance of Germany even though member states never intended for European law to have enough leverage to alter core elements of national financial systems? The article focuses on DG COMP's capacities for strategic action. DG COMP was able to enforce European competition rules for financial services, skilfully combining its legal competences with political strategies. The case illustrates that the regulatory integration of financial services in the EU is much more driven by supranational institutions than assumed by the bulk of the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The jury is still out with respect to whether European Union (EU)-level agencies act primarily as tools of national governments or not, although parts of the literature as well as the legal framework of EU agencies seem to favour the former interpretation. We argue that EU agencies which might be able to act relatively independently of national governments and the Council, but not necessarily independently from the Commission, would contribute to executive centre formation at the European level and thus to further transformation of the current political-administrative order. By measuring along several dimensions, we demonstrate that the Commission constitutes by far the most important partner of EU agencies. EU agencies deal (somewhat surprisingly) to a considerable extent with (quasi-) regulatory and politicized issues. When engaging in such areas, national ministries and the Council tend to strengthen their position, however, not to the detriment of the Commission. In addition to the Commission, national agencies make up the closest interlocutors in the daily life of EU agencies, indicating how EU-level agencies become building blocks in a multilevel Union administration, partly bypassing national ministries. We build our analysis on an on-line survey among senior officials in EU agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a rich body of literature on the functioning of the European Commission and the profile of its officials in the 1990s and early 2000s. Yet, the empirical evidence on the new generation Commission officials operating in the post-reform Commission bureaucracy is scarce. What kind of individuals end up working for the Commission? How do they think and behave on a daily basis? This article provides an insight into a crucial aspect of the everyday behaviour of Commission officials and whether national identity and categorizations play a role in the Commission. The analysis of the functions and meanings of nationality in a multinational context and the ways in which officials deal with nationality provides evidence of cosmopolitan dispositions and practices. In contrast to what has been previously argued in the literature, the empirical findings point to the effect of self-selection, selection and organizational socialization in establishing cosmopolitanism in the Commission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2–300 comitology committees monitor the EU Commission's use of delegated powers. Why should there be this unique and peculiar solution to a parliamentary control problem that is well known from all national political systems? This article argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the exact choice of comitology can only be explained by the actions of the Commission. The idea of comitology was introduced by the Commission, and it functioned as a focal point in the member states' negotiations on supranational administration in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The argument is substantiated in an analysis of the first uses of comitology within three widely different EU policy areas: agriculture, development aid, and customs policy. The general lesson is that the EU Commission can be an important informal agenda-setter in areas where it has no formal powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Commission's preferences and preference formation in relation to the Convention and the negotiation of the Constitutional Treaty. Opposing rational choice accounts, which explain Commission action in terms of the tendency of bureaucratic actors to seek to maximize power, status and opportunities, it argues that the Commission is best seen as an internally differentiated arena, from which preferences emerge as a result of complex interactions that entail the use of power, institutionalized myths and routines. It contends that the Commission was an ineffective performer in the debate on the future of Europe. As well as committing tactical and strategic mistakes, the Commission was disadvantaged by the explicitly political nature of the exercise and the opportunity structure of the Convention compared to previous IGCs. A third argument is that the ratification and post-ratification process reveal the current limitations on the Commission's ability to influence debates about the future of the Union. Its historic vocation as the engine of integration implies one course of action, while being cast as part of the problem suggests another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a concept aimed towards a better understanding of the European Commission's role during the implementation of European policies. This constitutes a research deficit. While our knowledge about the Commission's ability to set the agenda and to influence decision-making has continuously advanced, we lag behind in understanding the Commission's behaviour in policy implementation. The article proposes a mechanism that explains Commission acting throughout policy execution on the basis of resource interdependencies. It argues that the Commission has an intrinsic motivation to overcome informational asymmetries during policy implementation in order to stabilize its ordinary functions in policy drafting and decision-making. The central theoretical argument is thus based on the vulnerability of the Commission due to its lack of a formal say in national policy execution while it is held responsible for implementation deficiencies by the other European institutions. In order to diminish that dilemma – which occurs especially when European programmes stretch over repetitive policy cycles – the Commission needs what is termed implementation management capacity (IMC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While role behaviour and conflict dimensions in the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union have been fairly well documented, studies on the internal functioning of the College of the European Commission have been almost lacking. Thus, highly inconsistent images exist; ranging from portraying Commissioners as mainly independent Europeanists on the one hand, to seeing them as primarily national ‘ambassadors’ on the other. Although the main purpose of this article is to theorize College behaviour, some exploratory data indicate that Commissioners first and foremost champion their sectoral portfolio interests, while at the same time, although variably, being attentive to their collective responsibility within the Commission, their country of origin as well as their political party. Theoretically, Commissioners' decision behaviour is accounted for by considering the organizational structure, demography, locus and culture within which they are embedded, as well as the type of policy they are dealing with. It seems as if politics in the College has much in common with politics within national cabinets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the role the Commission plays in European foreign policies goes beyond the execution of the competences delegated by the member states. The Commission is not just the external negotiator of the EU, it can also use its powers as the guardian of the Treaties to expand its foreign policy competences. The case study of international air transport illustrates how the Commission was able to obtain an external negotiation mandate in June 2003 to which member states were originally opposed. The analysis draws particular attention to the Commission's reliance on the European Court of Justice and to a cognitive strategy centred on the United States. By means of these two tools, the Commission was able to affect the default condition of member state preferences and reorient the focal point of intergovernmental negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the transformations which have taken place in perceptions of the "comitology' system at European level. Whereas committees were initially conceived of as an instrument of intergovernmental control over the Commission, the evidence suggests that their functioning is generally consensual and that the Commission is among the most influential actors in committees. This explains the recent shift in the discussions over the committees' control function: the key issue is no longer how to preserve the Commission's autonomy from committees' interference, but rather how committees themselves can be kept under control, and by whom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The setting-up of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) is studied, exploring the genesis and the institutionalization of a new paradigm in European policy, the "protection of the Communities' financial interests', in the context of increasing public anxiety regarding issues of security. It is argued that the European Commission actually took advantage of being cast as the scapegoat in the 1999 crisis by progressively strengthening its own powers within the third pillar, progressing towards the construction of a single judicial area in Europe. In that respect, anti-fraud fighting is both a means and a strategy to reinforce the legitimacy of European governance. Nevertheless, such a strategy is risky when we observe that the effectiveness of European anti-fraud policy is highly dependent on the operational means mobilized by the member states, strictly managed by intergovernmental rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the merits of multi-level governance as an explanatory model of EU decision-making. Regional policy implementation is a particularly good case study for evaluating multi-level governance for two reasons. First, because regional policy, along with other EC structural policies, is considered to be at 'the leading edge of multi-level governance'. And, second, because 'Multi-level governance is prominent in the implementation stage' (Marks et al . 1996: 365). The article presents evidence to suggest that while multi-level participation is a feature of EC regional policy implementation in the UK, it is less clear that this constitutes multi-level governance: central government remains dominant. Thus, where the intergovernmentalist 'gatekeeper' notion is useful in describing the behaviour of national governments in EU policy-making, it makes sense to refer to an extended gatekeeper that can operate at all stages of the policy process, including the contested sphere of policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central argument of this article is that the European Commission has consolidated its role as a 'policy entrepreneur' but that it must pay attention also to its role as a 'policy manager'. The Commission's capacity for management is much weaker than its power of initiative because it lacks sizeable bureaucratic resources and largely implements policies through a system of shared administration with the member states. The Commission's financial management reform programme which was launched by President Santer when he took over from President Delors provides the focus of this article. The expansion of the budget and the saliency of fraud underlined the need for the Commission to enhance its management of EU finances. The programme involves reform enhancing the self-regulation of the Commission (internal reform) and the development of administrative partnerships with the member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the Treaty of Rome allowed member states to establish policies governing the trade in and production of armaments at the national level, the European Union (EU) has gradually been expanding its influence in defense industry matters. This article traces the history of EU involvement in defense industrial policy, with an emphasis on events over the past decade. One significant finding is that the European Commission and Parliament have played key roles in expanding the EU's policy-making machinery to include defense industrial matters, while the Council of Ministers has tried to resist such actions. A second important conclusion is that the concept of spillover is particularly appropriate in describing how and why the EU's policy-making has expanded to include defense industrial policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A crucial but relatively neglected area for the analysis of the role of the European Commission in European integration is the Commission's monitoring function. The examination of member states' violations of their Treaty obligations by state and by policy area indicates that non-compliance is a significant systemic phenomenon. The article concentrates on the processing patterns of the EC infringement procedure and advances a model for the analysis of the Commission's approach to non-compliance. It is argued that the analysis of the Commission's approach requires exploring the links between policy development, policy priorities and the exercise of the monitoring function. The Commission's strategic considerations which influence the evolution of monitoring in the European Union are examined with a co-operative 'enforcement policy game'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]