Expertise, politics and public opinion at the crossroads of the European Commission’s decision-making: The case of Glyphosate.

Giulia Bazzan,Marta Migliorati

doi:10.4000/irpp.849

Abstract

With the growing politicisation of European Union (EU) integration, the European Commission is increasingly facing a tension between technocratic and responsive decision-making. How does this tension play out in the process of supranational implementation under comitology rules? We argue that the tension between the Commission´s role as a technocrat and as a responsive bureaucrat takes place during the implementation process when the issue at stake becomes politicised. We test our argument through the analysis of the Glyphosate renewal procedure (2015-2017). We process-trace the case by means of semi-structured interviews, media and document analysis. We find that with the increase of issue visibility and subsequent politicisation, the Commission progressively abandons a purely technocratic behaviour. First, it puts in place political strategies such as delays and blame-shifting to release itself from the burden of unpopular decisions. Secondly, it seeks to respond to concerns expressed by consumers by proposing compromise-based measures closer to public interest. Ultimately, we show how the outcome of the policy process is mediated by politicisation and characterised by a shift from technocratic to responsive decision making.

Highlights

Among the plethora of existingnon-majoritarian institutions (Majone, 1996; Thatcher & Sweet, 2002) engaging in policy-making and regulation world-wide (Gilardi, 2009; Majone, 1994), the European Commission has received some of the greatest attention in scholarly literature
With the growing politicisation of European Union (EU) integration, the European Commission is increasingly facing a tension between technocratic and responsive decision-making. How does this tension play out in the process of supranational implementation under comitology rules? We argue that the tension between the Commissions role as a technocrat and as a responsive bureaucrat takes place during the implementation process when the issue at stake becomes politicised
While the Commission was largely conceived as a technocratic, elite-driven institution in the early days of EU integration, operating outside the public’s eye, an increasing bulk of literature looks at this institution as apoliticised bureaucracy (Christiansen, 1997a) facing contrasting demands from the priorities of EU member states on the one hand, and from European citizens on the other

Summary

Introduction

Among the plethora of existingnon-majoritarian institutions (Majone, 1996; Thatcher & Sweet, 2002) engaging in policy-making and regulation world-wide (Gilardi, 2009; Majone, 1994), the European Commission has received some of the greatest attention in scholarly literature. The system applies to very technical areas of policy-making that are expected to be dealt with in a very technocratic and consensual way (Joerges & Neyer, 1997). Against this background, throughout this article we argue that the tension between the Commissions role as a technocrat and as a political actor takes place during the process of supranational implementation, when the issue at stake manages to overcome the protected walls of comitology and enter the public arena. In support of our theoretical arguments, we provide a thorough empirical analysis of the development of a recent case of supranational implementation under comitology rules, i.e. the license renewal of the pesticide Glyphosate between 2015 and 2017

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Conclusion