Avoiding Paralysis: The Eastern Enlargement and the Council of the European Union

Abstract

Why does the Council of the European Union continue to function without apparent problems, despite the increase in the number and heterogeneity of its members brought about by the Eastern enlargement? We argue that the reason why the Council has not become paralysed lies in the increased delegation of its agenda load from the ministerial meetings downwards to the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper). We assess our argument on the basis of quantitative analysis of the amount of the so-called A-points (decided by Coreper) and B-points (decided by ministers) on the Council agenda in the years 2000 through 2007. Studying the delegation mechanism deeper, we argue that two design features of Coreper — its permanent nature and its broad scope of agenda coverage — enabled the delegation from ministerial meetings to take place and thus helped the Council cope with the larger and more heterogeneous membership.