The ability to amend legislative proposals introduced by the Commission is central to legislative process in the European Union. Despite this, very few attempts have been made to capture and explain such amendments. This study addresses this gap in the literature by considering the changes between the Commission's proposals and the final legislative outcome passed by the European Union. It does so by implementing minimum edit distance algorithms to measure changes between legislative proposals and outcomes. The findings suggest that legislative amendments are determined by the formal and informal institutional structures in which negotiations take place and characteristics of the proposal itself. Our conclusions contribute to the ongoing debate on the nature and distribution of legislative powers in the European Union.
Is the political system of the European Union (EU), and the European Commission (EC) consultations in particular, systematically biased in favour of some interests over others? In the course of the EC's stakeholder consultations, firms, interest groups and other stakeholders make competing policy recommendations. The EC rejects many such recommendations but adopt others in its policy proposals that initiate and steer the legislative procedures of the EU, creating winners and losers among stakeholders and prompting the question: What determines whether a policy recommendation from stakeholders will be adopted by the European Commission? Relying on a new data set of over 8000 policy recommendations from 693 stakeholders, with more specific measures of expertise and privileged access than previously available, this article evaluates whether the EC listens to stakeholders because of what they know, what they own or who they know. The article also presents a method that takes counter-lobbying into account statistically. Results indicate that lobbying success in the EC's environmental stakeholder consultations is based in part on what stakeholders know, but the consultations also significantly favour wealthy business interests.
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