The Working Groups of the Council of the European Union: Supranational or Intergovernmental Negotiations?

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to look at how far the functioning of Council working groups contributes to a supranational or to an intergovernmental communication network. For this we use data collected by interviewing diplomats and civil servants involved in these working groups. Our analysis consists of three steps. First, we describe the communication networks in general. Secondly, we look at how far Member States' representatives perceive similarities between their potential partners. Thirdly, we investigate to what extent there exist affinities between negotiators and their partners. In a final section, the potential of some explanatory variables will be explored.

An information network of officials? Dissecting the role and nature of the network of parliamentary representatives in the European Parliament

“…Juncos & Pomorska, 2011). Beyers and Dierickx (1998) contend that nationality -while remaining important in many respects -is diluted in the Council as a supranational network develops in juxtaposition to the intergovernmental characteristics of agents. In the context of the Council of Europe, Checkel (2003) has also found that social agents go 'native', to some extent.…”

The political economy of labor market regulation by the European Union

“…At least four studies of the pre-2004 Councils identify the North-South division as the main cleavage (Beyers and Dierickx 1998: 312, Mattila and Lane 2001: 45, Elgström et al 2001: 121, Zimmer et al 2005. 33 A survey of 125 EU experts by Thomson et al (2004) reveals the sources of this cleavage:…”

Economic Government of the EU

“…Kohler-Koch (2002a), for instance, has characterised the committees as transnational spaces of communication and as social systems with a social logic of their own, characterised by shared commitment to finding common solutions. A number of previous studies have shown that EU committees 164 Economic Government of the EU tend to develop into team-spirited working-groups in which the participants work closely together and gain confidence in one another (Hanny and Wessels 1998;Beyers and Dierickx 1998). Neyer (1997a, 1997b) even see the EU committees as examples of the development of a co-operative and deliberative culture in the EU.…”