The Politics of Codecision

Abstract

Codecision has been central to the efforts and energy of the European Parliament throughout the 1990s. But to what effect? This article considers the extent and nature of the influence that the Parliament had on legislation covered by the codecision provisions of the Maastricht Treaty (Art. 189B). It suggests that this influence can be explained in general terms, by the growth of shared norms between Council and Parliament, and in particular, by the specific characteristics of the distributive and regulatory policies covered by codecision. It concludes that the new Amsterdam provision (Art. 251) will reinforce the procedure as part of the acquis communautaire, but also open a broader debate about the role of the Parliament within the EU.

The Informal Politics of Legislation

“…The decision situation is not clearly defined, and participants and positions in trilogues are underspecified and flexible, as are communication channels and available information. Furthermore, the informal "rules of engagement" (Shackleton, 2000) Indeed, decision makers can reach agreement in trilogues, yet any such agreement is intermediate until formalized by the EP's plenary and a ministerial Council. At the same time, rubber-stamping is a pre-condition for early conclusion.…”

Interorganizational Cooperation and Intraorganizational Power: Early Agreements Under Codecision and Their Impact on the Parliament and the Council

“…The second arena is that of decision-making within the Parliament (Lord 1999;Shackleton 2000;Corbett, 2000). Here, the process of legislation is rather less centralized than in the Council.…”

The culture of trilogues

“…Council soon learned the new realities of being a co-legislator, in that Parliament would veto any attempt by Council to reintroduce its common position, as it did in the Open Network Provision (ONP) Voice 'This is an electronic pre-publication (including pre-proofs) version of an article submitted to the Journal of European Public Policy, and published as: C Roederer-Rynning and J Greenwood 'The Culture of Trilogues' Journal of European Public Policy, which is available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13501763.2014 5 Telephony Directive in 1994 (Shackleton, 2000). Council understood that legislative efficiency under co-decision required early inter-institutional confidence-building measures.…”

“…They brought informal practices to the analytic center of co-decision research (Shackleton 2000) and conceptualized trilogues as a "new mechanism" devised by the two branches of the legislature to manage their interdependence (Shackleton and Raunio, 2003). These early accounts have structured the subsequent debate around three distinct though interrelated themes of research: the institutional variety of trilogues; their power-distributive implications; and finally their normative implications.…”