Informal negotiations in EU legislative decision-making: a systematic review and research agenda
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Informal negotiations in EU legislative decision‑making: a systematic review and research agenda Thomas Laloux1
© European Consortium for Political Research 2019
Abstract Over the last 20 years, the political dynamics in EU legislative policy-making have fundamentally changed as trilogues have become the major forum for legislative negotiations. From this perspective, this article represents a first systematic review of the literature on trilogues by using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses. In doing so, it demonstrates the impact of trilogues on EU legislative politics, both intra- and inter-institutionally, as well as the normative concerns they have raised. It also shows that trilogues do not yet constitute uniform practices. Further, this article identifies the limits of our knowledge and therefore avenues for future research to improve our understanding of EU legislative politics. Keywords Early agreements · Ordinary legislative procedure · Research agenda · Systematic review · Trilogues
Introduction In the period since the early 2000s, legislative negotiations in the European Union (EU) have undergone increasing informalization. To facilitate the interinstitutional negotiations required by co-decision, the co-legislators developed a system of informal negotiations called trilogues. Trilogues are secluded meetings in which representatives of the legislative institutions negotiate an informal compromise that can be formally adopted by the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of the European Union (Council) afterward, fast-tracking thus the legislative process. The use of trilogue negotiations has since continued to increase, becoming the norm in EU legislative decision-making. During the eighth EP
* Thomas Laloux [email protected] 1
Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique‑FNRS ‑ Institut de sciences politiques Louvain‑Europe (ISPOLE), Université catholique de Louvain, Place Montesquieu 1 bte L2.08.07, 1348 Louvain‑la‑Neuve, Belgium Vol.:(0123456789)
T. Laloux
legislature, the vast majority of EU legislation was based on such informal compromises. This evolution has not gone unnoticed in the academic literature. Scholars have investigated several facets of trilogues, many of which have raised normative concerns. Yet, despite the crucial place of trilogues in the EU, no systematic review of this literature has been carried out so far. Hence, the cumulative findings of this research remain partly blurred, especially since it is largely based on case studies. This paper aims to fill this gap by systematically taking stock of existing academic knowledge on trilogue negotiations to develop a research agenda. Importantly, trilogues here refer to inter-institutional negotiations beyond those formally provided for in the EU treaties that lead to the adoption of legislation. In other words, in this study I consider all kinds of informal negotiations between legislative institutions that can take place during EU legislative decision-making and not merely tripartite
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