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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

Three years after the judgment of the General Court in the De Capitani case, we assess whether the findings of the Court have settled for good the debate between transparency and effectiveness in EU law-making or rather opened new reflections on legislative transparency in the EU.

This article assesses how trilogues affect the possibilities to hold the European Parliament to account from the perspectives of democracy as political equality and democracy as epistemic quality. Trilogues, informal and secluded meetings between a limited number of participants, have become standard operating procedure for reaching legislative decisions in the EU. Trilogues are defended because they provide efficient settings where decision-makers can discuss more freely but are also criticised for hindering open and inclusive decision-making processes. Despite recent rule reforms, we argue that the democratic problem with trilogues is not their informal or secluded character per se, but that the compromises reached in these settings are not sufficiently linked to or discussed among the collective of MEPs in arenas where external actors have access to legislators' arguments and debates. When internal and external accountability is not linked, legislative proposals are deprived of sufficient democratic authorisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapporteurs in the European Parliament are influential figures, drafting reports, preparing and collecting amendments and negotiating files on behalf of Parliament as a whole. Previous studies have shown a persistent under‐representation of MEPs from the post‐2004 accession states among rapporteurs. In this study, we demonstrate the evolution of this disparity. Although it no longer exists at the surface, MEPs from accession states are still very much under‐represented in the allocation of files that are negotiated with the Council using trilogues – leaving them mostly with prime responsibility for short and relatively uncomplicated files. This shows that unequal representation has taken on a more subtle guise than before, with 'west‐European' MEPs still firmly in the driving seat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relations between the European Parliament (EP) and civil society organizations (CSOs) in the EU’s legislative process. It focuses specifically on legislative trilogues, an informal institution bringing together the representatives of the EP, Council, and Commission in a secluded setting to conclude legislative agreements. Trilogues have become the modus operandi and an absolutely pivotal part of the EU law-making process: they are where the deals are made. While secluded decision-making offers plenty of opportunities for EU institutions to depoliticize law-making, we argue that trilogues have become politicized, partly from the relationship between the EP and CSOs. We flesh out this argument on the basis of insights from the politicization and the historical institutionalist literatures, advance two ideal types of trilogue politics, and explore these types on the basis of a preliminary examination of a comprehensive interview material.

Trilogues have become ‘normal’ structures in European Union (EU) decision-making but their functioning, based on secluded decision-making, makes it difficult to understand how institutional positions are formed and managed and which actors are better positioned to influence policy outputs. These are, however, important questions because, first, a coherent position in trilogues (one that withstands the scrutiny of the Council) enhances the European Parliament’s (EP) chances of achieving a favourable outcome following negotiation; second, because it has become more complicated to find a common position within the EP due to increased levels of politicisation and polarisation (especially in the form of Euroscepticism) in EU policy-making. Therefore, this article focuses on preparatory bodies preceding trilogues and the role they play in building Parliament’s positions. With the shift of political conflict from plenary to committees and now to shadows meetings, the latter have become de facto decision-making bodies. Not only do they serve to mediate intra-institutional conflict but also to anticipate Council and Commission positions. This article compares the use of shadows meetings in politicised and non-politicised issues. With the use of ethnographic data provided by participant observation and elite interviews, we aim to provide explanations on how these new instruments serve to informally manage politicisation, focusing in particular on the advantages of insularity in highly publicised negotiations.

In the early years of co-decision, scholars posited that informal trilogues would empower individual negotiators vis-à-vis their respective institutions because of their privileged position in the process of EU legislative decision-making. Now that the procedural framework governing trilogues has been tightened significantly in recent years particularly with the aim of controlling the negotiators, this article investigates if individual negotiators can still exercise control over the process of decision-making, biasing end results towards their own preferences. Based on a case study of the EU's fourth Railway Package, we conclude that this is indeed the case. Applying a new conceptual frame for analysing informal negotiations, we present first conclusion as to how chief negotiators can manipulate negotiations processes to achieve preferred results in this specific but influential forum of negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three years after the judgment of the General Court in the De Capitani case, we assess whether the findings of the Court have settled for good the debate between transparency and effectiveness in EU law-making or rather opened new questions on legislative transparency in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do EU actors promote secluded fora of decision making even as they have committed themselves to open and public lawmaking? How do they perceive and reconcile the ensuing tensions in practice? These questions, arising amidst growing public controversy, point to a blind spot in the scholarly agenda on EU lawmaking, which has overwhelmingly focused on the games institutions play. From an interpretivist perspective, we argue that rules are 'made' not by detached officials, but by practitioners puzzling out the meaning of their actions in their everyday experiences. Based on extensive interview material, the article captures trilogues as 'politicised diplomacy' and shows how they have become a 'permeable institution', shaped by dense flows of exchange between 'insiders' and 'outsiders'. The article helps pinpoint to what extent and how trilogues challenge democratic norms; and it punctures the myth of trilogues as quiet politics dominated by producer interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Lisbon Treaty National Parliaments (NPs) can play a formal role in the Ordinary Legislative Procedure (OLP). One of the complexities of this legislative process is that the formal decisions are pre-negotiated in informal trilogues between the Council, the European Parliament (EP) and the European Commission. NPs have no role to play in trilogues, and have difficulties accessing information discussed in trilogue meetings, hindering MPs to hold their national government to account for decisions made in the Council. This article explores whether NPs monitor trilogue negotiations, and, if so, how and why do they do this. The empirical material is collected through semi-structured interviews with actors from several NPs and a content analysis of debates in two Member States. The results show that NPs operate in a formal and informal institutional context, both at the EU and national level. These institutional arrangements are used by MPs to lower costs of collecting information on trilogue negotiations in order to be able to hold the government to account and to steer the negotiation position of the government in the direction of their own policy positions. However, the increased attention for trilogue negotiations by NPs cannot alleviate the phenomenon of domestic de-parliamentarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the Commission in inter-institutional relations, especially in trilogue negotiations, is usually described as that of an 'honest broker' mediating between the co-legislators. While this understanding is widely accepted, we do not know what being an honest broker actually means in practice. How does the Commission form its positions for trilogue negotiations? Does the Commission's honest-broker-image reflect its practical role in inter-institutional position formation processes? Based on actor-centred institutionalism, the paper explores two preparatory bodies in the Commission, the 'Groupe de relations interinstitutionelle' (GRI) and the pre-GRI. Preparatory bodies have been largely overseen in the literature, but have become key fora in which actors form their positions and mediate intra- and inter-institutional conflict. This paper uses ethnographic data provided by participant observation and elite interviews to explore these bodies. The findings depict the Commission rather as a committed than neutral broker; willing to mediate while ensuring it has a strong position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With higher levels of polarization in the European Parliament (EP), mainstream groups increasingly face the trade-off between engaging and dismissing Eurosceptic challenger parties. Therefore, this article proposes a model to understand the strategies of mainstream and Eurosceptic groups in legislative work. It uses content analysis of legislative amendments to explain under what conditions these two sets of actors decide to engage with or disengage from each other. We compare two legislative packages, the more technical Circular Economy Package with the highly politicized Asylum Reform Package to assess how the choices of mainstream and Eurosceptic groups influence the survival of amendments and the success of the EP in trilogues. The comparison shows that politicization leads to more polarization and, subsequently, increases the chances that mainstream groups will collaborate with and copy soft-Eurosceptics along a left-right divide. At the same time, we also demonstrate that disengagement from Eurosceptic groups is closely related to their small size and limited resources. Finally, although the cordon sanitaire is systematically used to exclude hard Eurosceptics, it is not effective when it comes to isolating radical populist amendments proposed by soft-Eurosceptics and mainstream groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the institutionalization of trilogues in the Council. What kind of practices have emerged in the Council to underpin this body's participation in trilogues, and how do these shape the decision-making culture in the Council? We conceptualize the institutionalization of trilogues in the Council using delegation theory, and particularly through the lens of two ideal-types of delegation focusing on sanctions and selection, respectively. We explore these ideal-types by drawing on extensive elite interviews. Following the distinction between mandating, monitoring, and sanctioning common to delegation relationships, we find the greatest changes in the mandating and monitoring of the Presidency, and few changes in the sanctioning processes. This shows that the sanctions model is on the rise. We find that trilogues have changed the Council as a legislative institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2018 3(2), 947-959 | European Forum Insight of 24 June 2018 | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. The judgment. - II.1. Factual background. - II.2. The findings of the General Court. - III. Concluding remarks. | (Abstract) On 22 March 2018, for the first time the General Court ruled on access to documents of trilogues (case T-540/15, De Capitani v. European Parliament). These are informal meetings between representatives of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission, which negotiate to reach an agreement, which must subsequently be approved by those institutions in accordance with their respective internal procedures. The judgment, delivered on the appeal made against a refusal by the European Parliament to grant access to the fourth column of the multicolumn table used in an on-going trilogue, confirms that access to documents produced in the legislative procedure can be denied only if the institution requested proves that it is reasonably foreseeable, and not purely hypothetical, that full access to the documents at issue is likely to undermine, specifically and actually, its decision-making process. The General Court considered that the principles of publicity and transparency are to be applied to trilogues, since they constitute a decisive stage in the legislative process, and that exceptions provided for in the regulation regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents shall be restrictively interpreted. The judgment represents an important step towards reinforcing transparency of trilogues and democratic legislative process in the EU.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who gains legislative influence in early agreement negotiations (trilogues) between the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union? Practitioners from both institutions suspect that it is the other side. Meanwhile, critics point at trilogues' lack of transparency. This article proposes that legislative power and institutional transparency are inversely related: Opacity makes an actor more influential in political negotiations. The argument is tested on a matched sample of legislative files from the 1999–2009 period. The findings suggest that the European Parliament became more influential in early agreement negotiations – where it became opaque vis-à-vis the Council. In such negotiations, the relative influence of the European Parliament substantially increased; by contrast, the European Parliament did not gain influence in negotiations where it remained transparent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Has the European Parliament (EP)'s acquisition of legislative powers diluted its traditional support for diffuse interests? This article considers the various arguments that challenge the EP's reputation as a champion of diffuse interests and advances an alternative interpretation grounded in the idea of the EP as a legitimacy seeking institution. These arguments are explored in light of EP strategies of public engagement. Whilst previous analyses have been centred on the EP itself, we broaden the empirical focus to examine patterns of diffuse interest engagement with the EP. We find variance in the way diffuse advocates engage with the EP, and identify a driver of differentiation among NGO advocates of diffuse interests organized at EU level. We draw on interviews with NGOs, representatives from EU political institutions, as well as data from the Transparency Register to assess NGO/EP interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Significant parts of the EU's legislative process remain shrouded in secrecy. In informal trilogues, representatives of the three main institutions negotiate compromises behind closed doors which are subsequently rubber-stamped in public meetings. While most research on (EU) transparency focuses on the availability of documents, this article investigates how much information on trilogue proceedings is shared with the general public through European Parliament (EP) committee meetings as the only forum to which public account must be rendered during the negotiation process. This article analyses the degree to which trilogues are reported back on, and the quality of feedback provided. Although the EP requires its trilogue negotiators to report back to its committees after each trilogue, the majority of trilogues is not reported back on at all, or not in time. Where feedback is given, its quality is often only poor. The EP thus does not deliver on its promises, which seriously undermines the legitimacy of the EU's legislative process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relations between the European Parliament (EP) and civil society organizations (CSOs) in the EU's legislative process. It focuses specifically on legislative trilogues, an informal institution bringing together the representatives of the EP, Council, and Commission in a secluded setting to conclude legislative agreements. Trilogues have become the modus operandi and an absolutely pivotal part of the EU law-making process: they are where the deals are made. While secluded decision-making offers plenty of opportunities for EU institutions to depoliticize law-making, we argue that trilogues have become politicized, partly from the relationship between the EP and CSOs. We flesh out this argument on the basis of insights from the politicization and the historical institutionalist literatures, advance two ideal types of trilogue politics, and explore these types on the basis of a preliminary examination of a comprehensive interview material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trilogues have become 'normal' structures in European Union (EU) decision-making but their functioning, based on secluded decision-making, makes it difficult to understand how institutional positions are formed and managed and which actors are better positioned to influence policy outputs. These are, however, important questions because, first, a coherent position in trilogues (one that withstands the scrutiny of the Council) enhances the European Parliament's (EP) chances of achieving a favourable outcome following negotiation; second, because it has become more complicated to find a common position within the EP due to increased levels of politicisation and polarisation (especially in the form of Euroscepticism) in EU policy-making. Therefore, this article focuses on preparatory bodies preceding trilogues and the role they play in building Parliament's positions. With the shift of political conflict from plenary to committees and now to shadows meetings, the latter have become de facto decision-making bodies. Not only do they serve to mediate intra-institutional conflict but also to anticipate Council and Commission positions. This article compares the use of shadows meetings in politicised and non-politicised issues. With the use of ethnographic data provided by participant observation and elite interviews, we aim to provide explanations on how these new instruments serve to informally manage politicisation, focusing in particular on the advantages of insularity in highly publicised negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the institutionalization of the European Parliament-as-a-legislature. It draws on the political development scholarship to conceptualize institutionalization and highlight the role of the environment in the development and decay of political institutions. On this premise, we argue that the political significance of the European Parliament (EP) depends on its capacity to develop strong institutions enabling it to ‘exist apart’ from its environment. We identify the embrace of codecision as a critical moment of the institutionalization of the EP-as-a-legislature and explore the value of the political development perspective in a comparative-historical study of trilogues in the EP. We present a typology of institutionalization of trilogues and argue that a model of generic parliamentary approach to trilogues is taking roots. While substantiating the thesis of the EP as a potentially autonomous institution, our findings also call for research into the resilience and sources of institutional patterns of trilogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU Treaties, Regulation 1049/2001 and the CJEU's case law require the highest standard of transparency for EU law-making. Yet, some pivotal stages of the legislative process remain completely opaque until the relevant decisions are adopted. This paper focuses on three different stages of this process, namely the adoption of the Commission's impact assessment, of the European Parliament's report by MEPs in the relevant committee within shadow meetings and the adoption of the final text of legislation within trilogue meetings. It concludes that opposing efficiency to transparency is a misguided approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policy initiatives aimed at the prevention of future financial crises originate with global harmonization in the form of executive standards issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. This article explores the role of the European Parliament ( EP) in the process of adapting the standards in European Union legislation passed in 2013 as the Capital Requirements Regulation/ Capital Requirements Directive IV. Unlike accounts casting the EP as increasingly dependent upon outside sources in order to meet its enhanced legislative role, we find it increasingly dexterous in developing and using in-house policy ideas, expertise, and not least a common sense of institutional purpose. Notable EP successes in final legislation include (but are not restricted to) a headline cap on bankers' bonuses in the face of entrenched business and national interests. The argument is developed by drawing upon a broad range of interviews together with other primary and secondary sources, tracing the contribution of the EP from the early stages of agenda-setting through to the development of an 'esprit de corps' among the committee lead team which survived intact throughout the 'black box' of trilogue negotiations. Besides illuminating the notoriously opaque trilogue process, the analysis also contributes to contemporary debates about whether the EP's increased legislative powers are resulting in a shift away from its traditional allegiances with diffuse interests toward a greater engagement with producer sources in order to fulfill requirements for policy expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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