New Members in Old Institutions: The Impact of Enlargement on the Committee of the Regions

Abstract

All EU institutions have recently faced the challenge of enlargement, the impact of which has not been limited to a change in the number of officials present or languages utilized. The transformation called into question the capacity of the common institutions to maintain an institutional identity and to absorb new members, integrating them properly into the institutional structures and procedures. The Committee of the Regions (CoR) is distinguished among the EU institutions for the broad range and variety of interests represented, a feature often identified as an obstacle for the smooth and effective work of the institution. In this context, the process of enlargement, which has substantially increased the CoR's membership and made the diversity of interests even broader, inevitably triggers the expectation of a growing degree of conflict in the Committee's internal policy-making process. The working hypothesis here is that enlargement has increased the level of internal conflict in the CoR and contributed to a further split of interests and the creation of new interest groups.

The Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee: How Influential are Consultative Committees in the European Union?

“…Despite the committees’ formal status, they are often ignored by the scientific community. Previous research on the EESC and the CoR has looked either at internal decision‐making procedures and the composition of actors within the committees or has provided general information about the advisory bodies on a textbook level; however, the influence of the two consultative committees has been largely neglected (Benz and Benz, ; Brunazzo and Domorenok, ; Jeffery, ; Lodge and Herman, ; Loughlin, ; Maurer, ; Morgan, ; Neshkova, ; Smismans, ; Warleigh, ).…”