"Appendix" [2008] ELECD 281; in Best, Edward; Christiansen, Thomas; Settembri, Pierpaolo (eds), "The Institutions of the Enlarged European Union" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Book Title: The Institutions of the Enlarged European Union

Editor(s): Best, Edward; Christiansen, Thomas; Settembri, Pierpaolo

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847203458

Section Title: Appendix

Number of pages: 4

Extract:

Appendix
The dataset used in Chapters 3 and 10 refers to all acts adopted by the
Council (alone or jointly with another institution, usually the EP) during
four presidencies: the two held in 2003 by Greece and Italy, respectively, the
one held in the second semester of 2005 by the United Kingdom and the
one held in the first half of 2006 by Austria.1
Three semesters of decision-making are thus deliberately excluded: the
whole of 2004 and the first half of 2005. The explanation is that the months
immediately surrounding the accession of ten new member states in May
2004 were in many respects a period of extraordinary administration. The
European elections of June 2004 caused a suspension of all the codecision
files until after the summer. The troublesome appointment of a new
Commission meant that the European executive was only ready and oper-
ational at the beginning of 2005, and it took a few additional months until
proposals introduced by the new Commission were discussed and adopted
by the other institutions. Quantitative studies widely and unanimously
document two trends. On the one hand, there was a dramatic but unsur-
prising drop in the amount of legislation adopted in the months after
enlargement (Dehousse et al. 2006, p. 26; Hagemann and De Clerck-
Sachsse 2007, p. 10).2 On the other, an extraordinarily high number of acts
was passed in the months preceding the entry of the new members.3 Given
the specificity of these three semesters, it ...