Designing a Collective Agent for Trilogues in the European Parliament

Administrative and judicial oversight of trilogues

“…Today, the use of trilogues has become a structural feature of the first reading of the legislative process employed in the vast majority of legislative proposals. The insulated negotiating style that purportedly lends the trilogue method its efficiency also creates high levels of opacity (Laloux 2017). Due to the small number of participants, limited standards of record keeping, and discretion of the negotiators, it becomes difficult for citizens and national parliaments to contribute to the decision-making process or to hold decision makers to account (Reh 2014: 826;Kardasheva 2012: 6).…”

twenty years of principal-agent research in EU politics: how to cope with complexity?

“…Another complexity emerges when some principals are closer involved to the work of the agent than others, which blurs the distinction between a principal and an agent. For instance, when the European Parliament conducts trilogue negotiations with the Council the Parliament is represented by the rapporteur (acting as agent of the EP committee) but also the shadow rapporteurs are member of the EP team in trilogues, giving the latter a different status than the 'normal' principals in the EP committee (Laloux, 2017).…”

“…It can for instance lay bare the conditions under which member states prefer to create an executive agency over delegating such regulatory powers to the European Commission (Dehousse, 2008;Keleman, 2002). It can also explain why the composition of the European Parliament's negotiating team in trilogues has evolved over time (Laloux, 2017). An older theme of research is member states' decisions to delegate further authority to the European Union (De Bie `vre and Du ¨r, 2005;Pollack, 2003) but also the question of why authority is fragmented prior to delegation, and why only parts of this authority has been delegated can provide interesting venues for future research.…”