TY - JOUR A1 - Reh, Christine A1 - Héritier, Adrienne A1 - Bressanelli, Edoardo A1 - Koop, Christel T1 - The Informal Politics of Legislation JF - Comparative Polical Studies N2 - This article investigates a widespread yet understudied trend in EU politics: the shift of legislative decision making from public inclusive to informal secluded arenas and the subsequent adoption of legislation as “early agreements.” Since its introduction in 1999, “fast-track legislation” has increased dramatically, accounting for 72% of codecision files in the Sixth European Parliament. Drawing from functionalist institutionalism, distributive bargaining theory, and sociological institutionalism, this article explains under what conditions informal decision making is likely to occur. The authors test their hypotheses on an original data set of all 797 codecision files negotiated between mid-1999 and mid-2009. Their analysis suggests that fast-track legislation is systematically related to the number of participants, legislative workload, and complexity. These findings back a functionalist argument, emphasizing the transaction costs of intraorganizational coordination and information gathering. However, redistributive and salient acts are regularly decided informally, and the Council presidency’s priorities have no significant effect on fast-track legislation. Hence, the authors cannot confirm explanations based on issue properties or actors’ privileged institutional positions. Finally, they find a strong effect for the time fast-track legislation has been used, suggesting socialization into interorganizational norms of cooperation. KW - European Parliament, fast-track legislation, informal politics, functionalist institutionalism, distributive bargaining, socialization Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414011426415 SN - 0010-4140 VL - 46 IS - 9 SP - 1112 EP - 1142 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bressanelli, Edoardo A1 - Koop, Christel A1 - Reh, Christine T1 - EU Actors under pressure: politicisation and depoliticisation as strategic responses JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - This contribution conceptualises bottom-up politicisation in Europe’s multi-level system. EU-level actors, we argue, respond strategically to the functional and political pressures ‘travelling up’ from the member states. Perceiving domestic dissensus as either constraining or enabling, actors display both self-restraint and assertiveness in their responses. Motivated by the survival of the EU as a system ‘under attack’, and by the preservation of their own substantive and procedural powers, actors choose to either politicise or depoliticise decision-making, behaviour and policy outcomes at the supranational level. As a collection, this Special Issue demonstrate that the choices actors make ‘under stress’ at the EU-level – ranging from ‘restrained depoliticisation’ to ‘assertive politicisation’ – are, indeed, conditional on how bottom-up pressures are perceived and processed. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2020.1713193 VL - 27 IS - 3 SP - 329 EP - 341 ER - TY - RPRT A1 - Bressanelli, Edoardo A1 - Koop, Christel A1 - Minetto, Francesca A1 - Reh, Christine T1 - The European Council: truly the law-maker-in-chief? N2 - We know that the European Council is a powerful and visible strategic agenda-setter, crisis manager, and impasse-breaker. Yet we are less familiar with the role of national heads of state or government in everyday law-making. By analysing all legislation under the ordinary legislative procedure since 1999, this CEPS Explainer asks whether and – if so – how and how often the European Council refers to these specific laws in its summit conclusions. We show that the European Council mentions about 20% of all legislation and especially prioritises laws that redistribute money, expand EU competences and respond to a specific crisis. On prioritised laws, the European Council mandates the EU’s other institutions and Member States and acts actively and assertively across all stages of the policy process. This is the case even on priorities not shared with the European Commission as the legislative agenda-setter. In short, this Explainer puts the spotlight firmly on the national leaders who run the show – not just in large, visible summits but also during the follow-up everyday law-making process. Y1 - 2025 UR - https://www.ceps.eu/ceps-publications/the-european-council-truly-the-law-maker-in-chief/ PB - CEPS CY - Brussels ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koop, Christel A1 - Reh, Christine A1 - Bressanelli, Edoardo T1 - Agenda‐setting under pressure: Does domestic politics influence the European Commission? JF - European Journal of Political Research N2 - The European Union (EU) has become increasingly visible and contested over the past decades. Several studies have shown that domestic pressure has made the EU's ‘electorally connected’ institutions more responsive. Yet, we still know little about how politicisation has affected the Union's non‐majoritarian institutions. We address this question by focusing on agenda‐setting and ask whether and how domestic politics influences the prioritisation of legislative proposals by the European Commission. We argue that the Commission, as both a policy‐seeker and a survival‐driven bureaucracy, will respond to domestic issue salience and Euroscepticism, at party, mass and electoral level, through targeted performance and through aggregate restraint. Building on new data on the prioritisation of legislative proposals under the ordinary legislative procedure (1999–2019), our analysis shows that the Commission's choice to prioritise is responsive to the salience of policy issues for Europe's citizens. By contrast, our evidence suggests that governing parties’ issue salience does not drive, and Euroscepticism does not constrain, the Commission's priority‐setting. Our findings contribute to the literature on multilevel politics, shedding new light on the strategic responses of non‐majoritarian institutions to the domestic politicisation of ‘Europe’. KW - agenda-setting; European Commission; politicisation; priorities; responsiveness Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12438 VL - 61 IS - 1 SP - 46 EP - 66 ET - European Journal of Political Research ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koop, Christel A1 - Reh, Christine T1 - Europe’s Bank and Europe’s Citizens: Accountability, transparency – legitimacy? JF - Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law N2 - Since the Eurozone crisis, critique of the European Central Bank (ECB) has centred on the Bank’s lack of acceptance by Europe’s citizens. One prominent strand of the debate argues that such acceptance can be enhanced by ensuring higher levels of compliance with the democratic standards of accountability and transparency. This article critically assesses this ‘standards-support nexus’ and its underlying assumptions. We suggest that three conditions need to be fulfilled for the argument to hold: (i) citizens are aware of the ECB and its design; (ii) citizens prioritise democratic standards over alternative motivations for acceptance; and (iii) citizens are able to differentiate between the ECB and the European Union’s wider multilevel system. Drawing from the established literature on support for European integration and trust in the ECB and from descriptive Eurobarometer data, we conclude that these three conditions are unlikely to bear out empirically. Moreover, increasing the ECB’s accountability and transparency in times of crisis and heightened politicisation could adversely affect the Bank’s policy-performance and public image. Hence, whilst not questioning the normative desirability of accountability and transparency, we caution against assuming too easily that such democratic standards alone will enhance citizen support, and against assuming that they come without trade-offs. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1023263X19827906 VL - 26 IS - 1 SP - 63 EP - 80 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bressanelli, Edoardo A1 - Koop, Christel A1 - Reh, Christine T1 - The impact of informalisation: Early agreements and voting cohesion in the European Parliament JF - European Union Politics N2 - European Union legislative decision-making is increasingly shifted into informal secluded arenas. Scholars have explained this trend and analysed its consequences for bargaining success and democratic legitimacy. Yet, we know little about how informalisation affects legislative behaviour in the European Parliament. This article contributes to closing the gap, by theorising and analysing the impact of ‘early agreements’ on cohesion. Given the reputational, political and transaction costs of failing an early agreement in plenary, we expect political groups to invest heavily in discipline and consensus, and legislators to comply in votes. Using a new dataset, combining Hix et al.’s (2007) roll-call data with original codecision data (1999–2011), we show that informalisation increases cohesion but only for centrist parties. Rapporteurships and votes on ‘costly’ legislative resolutions also matter, but do not mediate the effect of early agreement. KW - Cohesion, early agreements, European Parliament, ordinary legislative procedure, political groups Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1465116515608704 SN - 1465-1165 VL - 17 IS - 1 SP - 91 EP - 113 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reh, Christine A1 - Bressanelli, Edoardo A1 - Koop, Christel T1 - Responsive withdrawal? The politics of EU agenda-setting JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - This contribution asks whether and why the newly political environment of EU law-making impacts on the European Commission's choice (not) to announce the withdrawal of legislative proposals. We argue that the Commission uses ‘responsive withdrawal’ in response to bottom-up pressure, so as to signal self-restraint or policy-determination to different audiences. Bottom-up pressures are driven by (1) the national contestation of ‘Europe’; (2) visible controversy about optimal (crisis) governance; and (3) the domestic salience of EU legislation. Our hypotheses are tested on a new dataset of all codecision files concluded, withdrawn, rejected or ongoing between 2006 and 2018. We show that the Commission reacts to bottom-up pressure by either politicising or depoliticising the EU's legislative agenda: ‘withdrawal announcements’ are more likely when Euroscepticism is high and when legislation touches core state powers, but less likely when legislation is domestically salient. We also demonstrate the continued importance of cyclical and technical reasons. Our analysis complements extant explanations of withdrawal as the upshot of functional factors or of uncertainty, and contributes to the nascent debate about whether, why and how supranational actors respond when the systems in which they operate – and the policies they produce – come under attack. KW - Agenda-setting, European Commission, legislation, politicisation, depoliticisation, withdrawals Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2020.1712453 VL - 27 IS - 3 SP - 419 EP - 438 ER -