Democratic Legitimacy in the EU: Inside the 'Black Box' of Informal Trilogies
Final Report Abstract
In democracies, political contestation is a key mechanism eliciting and sustaining citizen beliefs in the moral authority of rulers to rule. In the EU, however, most deals are brokered informally behind closed doors in so-called trilogues. The formal legislative process only needs to approve the result of this informal bargaining process, relocating any remaining opportunities for political contestation to the EU’s backrooms. Hence, the TRILOGUES project, led by Gijs Jan Brandsma (Utrecht University), Justin Greenwood (Robert Gordon University of Aberdeen), Christilla Roederer-Rynning (University of Southern Denmark) and Ariadna Ripoll Servent (University of Bamberg) asked: How does political contestation affect the workings of informal EU legislative trilogues? After four years, we have seen how, indeed, trilogues continue to be a source of opacity in the EU legislative process. Our findings are based on a large dataset combining participant observation, around 200 interviews with actors from the EU institutions and civil society, 150 webcasts of EP committee debriefings and documentary analysis – including content analysis of EP legislative amendments. We derive three main conclusions from our project: 1) Trilogues as ‘politicised diplomacy’: Despite concerns about transparency, the Council and the EP consider trilogues a necessary ‘space to think’, away from public posturing and political messaging. However, while Council negotiators emphasise de-politicisation, EP negotiators cite empowerment of both the EP as an institution and EP political groups as the main attraction of trilogues. We, therefore, propose an interpretation of trilogues as politicised diplomacy, i.e., a hybrid and unstable fusion between a diplomatic and a parliamentary negotiation paradigm. 2) The more politicisation, the more informal politics: This need for insulation is present not just in reference to external pressures but also internal conflicts inside each institution. In the Commission, it often requires more intensive and politicised coordination between services. In the EP, the more a file is politicised, the more it runs the risk of shifting towards secluded arenas, where it is easier to exclude (hard) Eurosceptic and radical parties from legislative work. However, our research has shown that the use of this ‘cordon sanitaire’ hides a world of informal networks and cooperation between mainstream and non-mainstream parties based on personal connections, expertise and ideological competition on the domestic level. 3) The more politicisation, the less transparency: We have found that – despite claims to the contrary – the EP fares poorly regarding transparency to the public and to backbench MEPs. Similarly, in the Council, the ‘footnotes system’, which made it easy to follow member states’ positions has fallen into disuse, resulting in a less transparent Council process. Instead of transparency, we find that ’permeability’ has become the rule: seclusion does not prevent civil society organisations from acquiring information about trilogue negotiations, which allows them to engage in ‘quiet’ and ‘noisy’ politics. In sum, our project shows the necessity to broaden our understanding of power and politics in trilogues, integrating insights from classic comparative politics and public policy literature. The project also underlines the importance of linking macro-processes to micro-behaviour, in order to acquire a thicker understanding of the institutional contexts in which actors operate. Finally, the project shows how the methodological challenge of studying secluded negotiations can be alleviated by mixing methods and using a wide array of documentary, interview and observational data. At the same time, it also underlines the limitations of using text mining for achieving a large-N comparison: the lack of transparency and the lack of homogenous formats makes the use of documents for text mining and quantitative analysis challenging. In the Press: https://euobserver.com/institutional/142041; https://euobserver.com/institutional/145649
Publications
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(2018) ‘The European Parliament: A Normal Parliament in a Polity of a Different Kind’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
Ripoll Servent, A. and Roederer-Rynning, C.
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(2019) ‘Die Europawahlen aus der Innensicht: Was bedeuten die Wahlen für die zukünftige Zusammenarbeit der europäischen Institutionen?’, Regierungsforschung
Panning, L. and Felder, A.
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(2019) ‘Eurosceptics in trilogue settings: interest formation and contestation in the European Parliament’, West European Politics 42(4): 755–775
Ripoll Servent, A. and Panning, L.
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(2019) ‘Failing under the “shadow of hierarchy”: Explaining the role of the European Parliament in the EU’s “asylum crisis”’, Journal of European Integration 41(3): 293– 310
Ripoll Servent, A.
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(2019) ‘Preparatory Bodies as Mediators of Political Conflict in Trilogues: The European Parliament’s Shadows Meetings’, Politics and Governance 7(3): 303–315
Ripoll Servent, A. and Panning, L.
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(2019) ‘The European Parliament after the 2019 Elections: Testing the Boundaries of the “Cordon Sanitaire”’, Journal of Contemporary European Research 15(4): 331–342
Ripoll Servent, A.
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(2019) ‘The new European Parliament: more Eurosceptic?’, UK in a changing Europe
Ripoll Servent, A.
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(2019) ‘Trilogues: The Challenges Ahead - Recommendations’
Brandsma, G. J., Greenwood, J., Hoppe, A., Panning, L., Ripoll Servent, A. and Roederer- Rynning, C.
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(2020) ‘Trilogue reform: displaced by Covid?’, Encompass
Greenwood, J., Brandsma, G. J., Ripoll Servent, A. and Roederer-Rynning, C.
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(2021) ‘Building and Managing the European Commission’s Position for Trilogue Negotiations’, Journal of European Public Policy 28(1)
Panning, L.
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(2021) ‘Engaging the Disengaged? Explaining the Participation of Eurosceptic MEPs in Trilogue Negotiations’, Journal of European Public Policy 28(1)
Ripoll Servent, A. and Panning, L.
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(2021) ‘Inside the black box of trilogues: Introduction to the theme issue’, Journal of European Public Policy 28(1)
Brandsma, G. J., Greenwood, J., Ripoll Servent, A. and Roederer-Rynning, C.
