Democratic Legitimacy in the EU:
Inside the 'Black Box' of informal trilogues
October 2016 - September 2020
'Open Research Area' (DFG, ESRC, NWO) grant RI 2536/3-1 'TRILOGUES'
Partner: Gijs Jan Brandsma, Justin Greenwood, Christilla Roederer-Rynning
Research staff: Lara Panning, Alex Hoppe
'Open Research Area' (DFG, ESRC, NWO) grant RI 2536/3-1 'TRILOGUES'
Partner: Gijs Jan Brandsma, Justin Greenwood, Christilla Roederer-Rynning
Research staff: Lara Panning, Alex Hoppe
Project description
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 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 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 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.
Publications
Brandsma, G. J. (2019) ‘Transparency of EU informal trilogues through public feedback in the European Parliament: promise unfulfilled’, Journal of European Public Policy 26(10): 1464-1483
Brandsma, G.J., Dionigi, M.K., Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2021) 'Trilogues in Council: disrupting the diplomatic culture?', Journal of European Public Policy, 28(1), 10-31
Brandsma, G.J., Dionigi, M.K., Greenwood, J., Ripoll Servent, A. and Roederer-Rynning, C., (2021) ‘Inside the black box of trilogues: introduction to the special issueInside the black box of trilogues: Introduction to the theme issue’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 28(1), pp. 1-9
Brandsma, G.J. and Hoppe, A. (2021) 'He who controls the process controls the outcome? A reappraisal of the relais actor thesis', Journal of European Integration, 43:3, 347-363
Brandsma, G. J., and Meijer, A. (2020). 'Transparency and the efficiency of multi-actor decision-making processes: an empirical analysis of 244 decisions in the European Union'. International Review of Administrative Sciences.
Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2019a) ‘In the Shadow of Public Opinion: The European Parliament, Civil Society Organizations, and the Politicization of Trilogues’, Politics and Governance, 7(3), 316–326.
Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2019b) ‘Taming Trilogues: The EU’s Law-Making Process in a Comparative Perspective’, in O. Costa (ed.). The European Parliament in Times of EU Crisis: Dynamics and Transformations. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 121– 141.
Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2020) ‘Power at the expense of diffuse interests? The European Parliament as a legitimacy-seeking institution’, European Politics and Society 21(1), 118–136.
Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2021) ‘Organized interests and trilogues in a post- regulatory era of EU policy-making.’, Journal of European public policy 28(1).
Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2020) 'Power at the expense of diffuse interests? The European Parliament as a legitimacy-seeking institution', European Politics and Society, 21 (a), 118-136
Panning, L. (2021) 'Building and managing the European Commission’s position for trilogue negotiations', Journal of European Public Policy, 28(1), 32-52.
Ripoll Servent, A. (2022). "When Words Do Not Follow Deeds: An Analysis of Party Competition Between Centre-Right and Eurosceptic Radical-Right Parties in the European Parliament", in Petra Ahrens, Anna Elomäki and Johanna Kantola (Eds.): European Parliament’s Political Groups in Turbulent Times, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 123–146.
Ripoll Servent, A. (2019a) ‘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. (2019b) ‘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. and Panning, L. (2021) ‘Engaging the Disengaged? Explaining the Participation of Eurosceptic MEPs in Trilogue Negotiations’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 28(1), pp.72-92
Ripoll Servent, A. and Panning, L. (2019). 'Preparatory Bodies as Mediators of Political Conflict in Trilogues: The European Parliament’s Shadows Meetings', Politics and Governance, vol. 7(3), pp. 303-315.
Ripoll Servent, A. and Panning, L. (2019). 'Eurosceptics in Trilogue Settings: Interest Formation and Contestation in the European Parliament', West European Politics, 42(4), pp. 755-775.
Roederer-Rynning, C. and Ripoll Servent, A. (2018), 'The European Parliament: A Normal Parliament in a Polity of a Different Kind', in: William Thompson (Ed.): Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, New York: Oxford University Press.
Roederer-Rynning, C. (2019) ‘Passage to bicameralism: Lisbon’s ordinary legislative procedure at ten’, Comparative European Politics 17(6), 957-973.
Roederer-Rynning, C. and Greenwood, J. (2017) ‘The European Parliament as a Developing Legislature: Coming of Age in Trilogues?’, Journal of European Public Policy 24(5), 735-754.
Roederer-Rynning, C. and Greenwood, J. (2021) ‘Black boxes and open secrets: trilogues as “politicised diplomacy”’, West European Politics 44(3), 485-509.
Brandsma, G. J. (2019) ‘Transparency of EU informal trilogues through public feedback in the European Parliament: promise unfulfilled’, Journal of European Public Policy 26(10): 1464-1483
Brandsma, G.J., Dionigi, M.K., Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2021) 'Trilogues in Council: disrupting the diplomatic culture?', Journal of European Public Policy, 28(1), 10-31
Brandsma, G.J., Dionigi, M.K., Greenwood, J., Ripoll Servent, A. and Roederer-Rynning, C., (2021) ‘Inside the black box of trilogues: introduction to the special issueInside the black box of trilogues: Introduction to the theme issue’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 28(1), pp. 1-9
Brandsma, G.J. and Hoppe, A. (2021) 'He who controls the process controls the outcome? A reappraisal of the relais actor thesis', Journal of European Integration, 43:3, 347-363
Brandsma, G. J., and Meijer, A. (2020). 'Transparency and the efficiency of multi-actor decision-making processes: an empirical analysis of 244 decisions in the European Union'. International Review of Administrative Sciences.
Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2019a) ‘In the Shadow of Public Opinion: The European Parliament, Civil Society Organizations, and the Politicization of Trilogues’, Politics and Governance, 7(3), 316–326.
Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2019b) ‘Taming Trilogues: The EU’s Law-Making Process in a Comparative Perspective’, in O. Costa (ed.). The European Parliament in Times of EU Crisis: Dynamics and Transformations. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 121– 141.
Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2020) ‘Power at the expense of diffuse interests? The European Parliament as a legitimacy-seeking institution’, European Politics and Society 21(1), 118–136.
Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2021) ‘Organized interests and trilogues in a post- regulatory era of EU policy-making.’, Journal of European public policy 28(1).
Greenwood, J. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2020) 'Power at the expense of diffuse interests? The European Parliament as a legitimacy-seeking institution', European Politics and Society, 21 (a), 118-136
Panning, L. (2021) 'Building and managing the European Commission’s position for trilogue negotiations', Journal of European Public Policy, 28(1), 32-52.
Ripoll Servent, A. (2022). "When Words Do Not Follow Deeds: An Analysis of Party Competition Between Centre-Right and Eurosceptic Radical-Right Parties in the European Parliament", in Petra Ahrens, Anna Elomäki and Johanna Kantola (Eds.): European Parliament’s Political Groups in Turbulent Times, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 123–146.
Ripoll Servent, A. (2019a) ‘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. (2019b) ‘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. and Panning, L. (2021) ‘Engaging the Disengaged? Explaining the Participation of Eurosceptic MEPs in Trilogue Negotiations’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 28(1), pp.72-92
Ripoll Servent, A. and Panning, L. (2019). 'Preparatory Bodies as Mediators of Political Conflict in Trilogues: The European Parliament’s Shadows Meetings', Politics and Governance, vol. 7(3), pp. 303-315.
Ripoll Servent, A. and Panning, L. (2019). 'Eurosceptics in Trilogue Settings: Interest Formation and Contestation in the European Parliament', West European Politics, 42(4), pp. 755-775.
Roederer-Rynning, C. and Ripoll Servent, A. (2018), 'The European Parliament: A Normal Parliament in a Polity of a Different Kind', in: William Thompson (Ed.): Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, New York: Oxford University Press.
Roederer-Rynning, C. (2019) ‘Passage to bicameralism: Lisbon’s ordinary legislative procedure at ten’, Comparative European Politics 17(6), 957-973.
Roederer-Rynning, C. and Greenwood, J. (2017) ‘The European Parliament as a Developing Legislature: Coming of Age in Trilogues?’, Journal of European Public Policy 24(5), 735-754.
Roederer-Rynning, C. and Greenwood, J. (2021) ‘Black boxes and open secrets: trilogues as “politicised diplomacy”’, West European Politics 44(3), 485-509.
Blogs and media appearances
Euobserver (2018) [Interview] Academic to probe EU’s secret law-making, 6 December.
Euobserver (2019) [Interview] EU has ‘zero incentive’ to break open ‘trilogue’ deals, 14 August.
Greenwood, J., Brandsma, G., Ripoll Servent, A. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2020) 'Trilogue reform: displaced by Covid?', Encompass
Panning, L. and Felder, A. (2019) ‘Die Europawahlen aus der Innensicht: Was bedeuten die Wahlen für die zukünftige Zusammenarbeit der europäischen Institutionen?’, Regierungsforschung
Ripoll Servent, A. (2019). 'The New European Parliament: More Eurosceptic?', The UK in a Changing Europe
Euobserver (2018) [Interview] Academic to probe EU’s secret law-making, 6 December.
Euobserver (2019) [Interview] EU has ‘zero incentive’ to break open ‘trilogue’ deals, 14 August.
Greenwood, J., Brandsma, G., Ripoll Servent, A. and Roederer-Rynning, C. (2020) 'Trilogue reform: displaced by Covid?', Encompass
Panning, L. and Felder, A. (2019) ‘Die Europawahlen aus der Innensicht: Was bedeuten die Wahlen für die zukünftige Zusammenarbeit der europäischen Institutionen?’, Regierungsforschung
Ripoll Servent, A. (2019). 'The New European Parliament: More Eurosceptic?', The UK in a Changing Europe
Dissertations
Hoppe, A. (2020) 'The Devil is in the Process: An Analysis of the Impact of Negotiation Processes in Trilogues on EU Legislation'.
Hoppe, A. (2020) 'The Devil is in the Process: An Analysis of the Impact of Negotiation Processes in Trilogues on EU Legislation'.
Recommendations
During our event of 18 June 2019 on the future challenges of trilogues, kindly hosted by the Representation of the Free State of Bavaria, all participants agreed that trilogues are indispensable to the EU legislative system. But there were calls for more accountability and transparency in inter-institutional negotiations. Based on our research, we recommend the following to increase the accountability and transparency of trilogues, without jeopardizing the space to negotiate.
Trilogue Recommendations
During our event of 18 June 2019 on the future challenges of trilogues, kindly hosted by the Representation of the Free State of Bavaria, all participants agreed that trilogues are indispensable to the EU legislative system. But there were calls for more accountability and transparency in inter-institutional negotiations. Based on our research, we recommend the following to increase the accountability and transparency of trilogues, without jeopardizing the space to negotiate.
Trilogue Recommendations