The impact of the Eastern enlargement on the decision-making capacity of the European Union

Abstract

This contribution investigates the impact of the Eastern enlargement on the decision-making capacity of the European Union. On the basis of new data on the number and types of legal acts produced by the EU and on the time between the proposal and adoption of legislative acts (1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012), the contribution argues that enlargement has had a rather limited impact on legislative production and duration and that it is extremely hard to disentangle this impact from other contemporaneous institutional and socioeconomic developments. On the basis of analyses of expert-based policy positions of member states in EU negotiations and on voting data from the Council of Ministers of the EU, it is argued that enlargement has possibly added a new dimension of contestation in EU legislative decision-making, but one that concerns a relatively small share of all negotiations in few policy fields like environment. All in all, there is no evidence that the Eastern enlargement has led to the institutional gridlock and loss of decision-making capacity that the public, many politicians and some academics as well have feared.

Signals to Their Parliaments? Governments’ Use of Votes and Policy Statements in the EU Council

“…Hence, the only reward governments may expect from adopting an opposing position in the Council is the clear and strong signal that such opposition sends to their respective audiences, both inside and external to the Council setting. Therefore, we assume, in accordance with other recent studies (see author, ; Toshkov, 2017), that recorded opposition in the Council is not necessarily intended to stop the decision-making process, as in most cases this will not be possible by a single government or a small number of governments at the stage of the final decision. Instead, the Council's decision records are seen as a tool through which governments strategically chose to signal to external stakeholders that they have taken a particular political stand in the EU setting.…”

Substance and subsidiarity: the economic dimension of conflict in the early warning system

“…First, a concern is that GDP distance functions as a proxy of old versus new member states. Indeed, the old EU-15 countries are much richer than the most Central and Eastern European countries that have joined since 2004 (Toshkov 2017). This might lead to incorrectly attributing the effect of co-issuance among the old and the new to differences in economic development.…”

“…Traditional methods for uncovering dimensions of conflict include NOMINATE and Bayesian methods (Hagemann 2007). However, a downside of these methods is that they yield dimensions that are still to be interpreted (Toshkov 2017), and that may not be causal. For instance, geography may appear to be important because of spatial correlations in preferences (Bailer, Mattila, and Schneider 2015).…”

Influence in the EU: Measuring Mutual Support

“…15 On these 585 non-unanimous votes on proposals, the 28 Member States' ministers have cast in total 14,275 votes, of which 13,527 were votes in favour, 12,397 without and 1,130 with statements; 380 abstentions, 300 without and 80 with statements; 369 votes 12 Available online at: http://www.consilium.europa.eu/. 13 See, for example, Arregui and Thomson (2014), Bailer et al (2015), Høyland and Wøien Hansen (2014) and Toshkov (2017). 14 For the countries that joined the Union on May 2004 (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia): 1,408 votes, and for the countries that joined the Union on January 2007 (Bulgaria, Romania): 985 votes.…”