European Parliament-Commission Relations and International Agreements

Abstract

This article studies the practices of interaction between the European Parliament (EP) and the Commission during the negotiation of international agreements. The Commission negotiates on behalf of the EU and since 2009, the EP can veto the ratification of most agreements. While the EP has sometimes leveraged its veto power through various activities, it is unclear how the EP and the Commission interact in practice. Therefore, this article asks: how do the EP and the Commission interact during the negotiation of international agreements? I rely upon twenty-nine semi-structured interviews with EP and Commission officials in six policy fields. I distinguish six practices and three types of EP-Commission interactions, which differ depending on the policy field. First, trade displays very dense, maximalist interactions. Second, justice and home affairs, and environment and climate, episodically display practices going beyond information provision. Third, other policy fields display only practices of informing the EP. These results confirm the distinctiveness of the policy field of trade, show the fragmentation of the EU’s political order regarding international agreements and the potential instability of practices of interaction. Taken together, the article demonstrates the value of analysing EP-Commission interactions, rather than focusing solely on the perspective of the EP’s assertion.