Tsebelis, George --- "The Rules of Decisionmaking in EU Institutions" [2012] ELECD 667; in Eger, Thomas; Schäfer, Hans-Bernd (eds), "Research Handbook on the Economics of European Union Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Economics of European Union Law

Editor(s): Eger, Thomas; Schäfer, Hans-Bernd

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849801003

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: The Rules of Decisionmaking in EU Institutions

Author(s): Tsebelis, George

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

2 The rules of decisionmaking in EU institutions
George Tsebelis* 1




For much of the first decade of the twenty-first century (2001­09) the EU has tried to
reform its institutions. These efforts began in the mid-1980s and continued through the
early 2000s, resulting in a new agreement every three to four years with little ultimate
success (Tsebelis and Yataganas 2002). Further, the initial institutions adopted in the
Single European Act (SEA 1986) were essentially replicating the decisionmaking rules
in the Council adopted in the Rome Treaty (1957) and adding an important role for
the European Parliament (Tsebelis 1994; Tsebelis and Kreppel 1999). So, the de jure
decisionmaking rules in the Council have remained essentially stable (although not
applied until the SEA) and changed for the first time under the institutional reform
process initiated after the Nice Treaty (2000). Table 2.1 demonstrates this stability of
the required qualified majority in the Council (over 70 percent from 1958 until the
Convention).
The reform process that led to the first real change in European institutions started
with the Laeken declaration (2001) and took almost ten years to be completed. So, in the
EU case, stasis was followed by painstakingly slow change. The reason for the slow rate
of change was that while the target was set and known (set by the significant institutional
change produced by the European Convention), it was not acceptable by all the political
actors whose assent was required to instigate change. These actors engaged in ...