Why does the European Commission at times propose legislative drafts that provoke Member State opposition, that introduce strikingly high or low standards, or that actively contradict each other? Miriam Hartlapp, Julia Metz and Christian Rauh present findings from a study of 48 legislative drafting processes. They argue that while the Commission is often thought of as a unified actor, there is substantial disagreement within the Commission over the nature of legislative proposals. They write that studying this conflict is key to understanding the policies the institution proposes for Europe

Hartlapp, Miriam

Metz, Julia

Rauh, Christian

LSE Research Online

Jean-Claude Juncker, Credit: European Parliament (CC-BY-SA-ND-NC-3.0)26/02/2015Conﬂict inside the European Commission is a key factor inshaping EU legislationblogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/02/26/conﬂict-inside-the-european-commission-is-a-key-factor-in-shaping-eu-legislation/Why does the European Commission at times propose legislative drafts that provoke Member Stateopposition, that introduce strikingly high or low standards, or that actively contradict each other?Miriam Hartlapp, Julia Metz and Christian Rauh present ﬁndings from a study of 48 legislativedrafting processes. They argue that while the Commission is often thought of as a uniﬁed actor,there is substantial disagreement within the Commission over the nature of legislative proposals.They write that studying this conﬂict is key to understanding the policies the institution proposes forEurope.The European Commission is at the core of the European Union’s political system and its quasi-monopoly on the initiation of legislation provides signiﬁcant leverage over EU policy. Within its ﬁve-year terms, each Commission proposes up to 2,000 binding legal acts and thus crucially shapes therules that govern the daily lives of more than 500 million European citizens.Despite this centrality in EU governance, little is known about its internal position formationprocesses and inconsistent pictures of Commission agency dominate public and academic debates.The Commission, seen as a monolithic actor, is depicted as being either a technocratic body thatadopts policies it deems to be eﬃcient and eﬀective problem solutions or an inherently politicalbureaucracy that constantly seeks to increase its competences vis-à-vis national governments.These perspectives do not explain why Commission proposals sometimes give rise to formidableopposition from the member states and other stakeholders, such as those on the EuropeanResearch Council. They also fail to explain why the Commission sometimes introduces strikinglyhigh or strikingly low standards on closely related issues, as in the case of consumer policy, or evenintroduces proposals that actively contradict eachother in substance, as occurred with the posting ofworkers and liberalisation of services directive.Our book Which Policy for Europe? Power andConﬂict inside the European Commission takes issuewith monolithic conceptions of the Commission andchallenges the unitary actor assumption. Chieﬂy, weassess how the policy position of an individualDirectorate-General inside the Commission is formedwith regard to a speciﬁc legislative proposal and howwe can explain a Directorate-General’s policychoices. In addition we also analyse how deviatinginternal positions are coordinated and how we canexplain the assertiveness of a Directorate-General ininﬂuencing the ﬁnal Commission proposal’ssubstance.Frequent internal conﬂictWe have analysed 48 legislative drafting processes that fall into the intersection of social and common market1/5policies, research and innovation policies, and consumer policy adopted during the Prodi and Barrosso ICommissions (1999-2009). For each legal act, we reconstruct the complete position formation process inside theCommission, mainly relying on ﬁrst-hand insights drawn from 150 structured interviews with Commission oﬃcialswho had direct involvement. We ﬁnd that while the outside view usually presents consensual decision-making in theCollege of Commissioners – obviously this makes sense to strengthen the Commission’s position vis-à-vis theCouncil and Parliament – the inside view on the process of position formation tells quite a diﬀerent story.First, far-reaching policy choices are often taken at the Commission’s administrative level, rather than at the politicallevel of the College of Commissioners. Second, inside the Commission intense interactions and substantial conﬂictare the norm rather than the exception. This makes position formation a time-consuming process (on average 25.6months) and oﬀers multiple entrance points for external interests, such as member states, organised interests, orexperts, as well as for other aﬀected services.In fact, in more than three quarters of the analysed cases we found substantially deviating positions betweendiﬀerent administrative units inside the Commission. Typically, three to four Directorates-General disagreed and didso across rather stable conﬂict lines, as the Figure below shows. For example, legislation in the area of social andinternal market policies often evoked conﬂict between the Directorates-General for Employment (EMPL), for theInternal Market (MARKT), and for Enterprise and Industry (ENTR).Figure: Conﬂict within the Commission by policy areas (click to enlarge)Note: The three charts indicate the degree of conﬂict between Commission Directorates- 2/5Note: The three charts indicate the degree of conﬂict between Commission Directorates-General in three policy areas. The vertical axis indicates the frequency with which aparticular Directorate-General was the lead actor on legislation within the policy area (thehigher the number the more active they were). The horizontal axis indicates how frequentlyeach Directorate-General took a ‘deviant position’ (i.e. a position which deviated from theideal position of the lead actor). Directorates-General which appear on the right of a charthave accordingly challenged the formally responsible department more often in therespective policy area. For a full list of the Directorates-General and their abbreviations seehere.Three ideal types of position formationIn essence, the policy substance of a Commission proposal depends on which Directorates-General and/orCommissioners were involved and who proved to be most powerful. Consequently, interaction inside theCommission needs to feature much more prominently in our explanations of the policies proposed for Europe.With this stated, what are the diﬀerent substantial positions, conﬂict lines and power resources inside theCommission? We have analysed these at length, with the general conclusion being that the Commission neitherfollows member state interests nor focuses on eﬀective problem solutions all of the time. Rather, diﬀerent types ofagency constantly co-exist inside the Commission. These can be summarised into three ideal-typical processpatterns.First, in a technocratic position formation process, the internal Commission actor’s most important goal is ﬁnding theoptimal policy solution. Expertise is the bureaucrat’s most relevant source of inﬂuence. For example, the extantacquis and ECJ jurisprudence are important sources of legal consistency and external views are welcomed if theyoﬀer eﬃcient solutions or templates. However, as sectoral policy-portfolios might diﬀer in their preferred problemsolutions, interaction between Commission services may emerge, which then resembles a coordination game whereall actors expect common spoils and adjust their positions on the basis of argumentative processes.Second, this view contrasts with Commission actors who enter position formation with the goal of retaining orexpanding their competences and/or budget vis-à-vis the national level or in turf wars with other Commissionservices. Positions are often best explained by the anticipation of future decision-making in view of aggregatenational interests. Stakeholders and interests are granted inﬂuence where they deliver support and are deemednecessary to safeguard competence extension. Diﬀering sharply from technocratic processes, interaction resemblesa zero-sum game where one Directorate-General ‘wins’ and another ‘loses’, with Directorates-General exploiting allavailable resources strategically to this end.Finally, processes are equally political under the policy-seeking type. The diﬀerence here is that actors enter theprocess with ideological goals and use their oﬃces to accomplish them. Policy positions and internal assertivenessresult from a pursuit of a normative ﬁt between actor ideologies and the contents of the legislative proposal. Thismeans that stakeholder access follows a so called ‘neo-pluralist’ pattern and that a Directorate-General may mostlycare about those member states with an ideologically congruent policy. Conﬂict is typically overcome by buildingexternal and internal alliances held together by the allies’ beliefs and views: for example along close party-politicalstances among Commissioners or among like-minded services.Speciﬁc processes might share diﬀerent ideal typical features or might switch from one type to the other in oneprocess. In explaining what mediates between the diﬀerent process-types, we ﬁnd that policy context matters: Highuncertainty about policy consequences suppresses internal competence-seeking but does not necessarily lead tomore technocratic decision-making. On the contrary, uncertainty sometimes made internal actors rely on normativeheuristics, thus resulting in policy-seeking processes. A high public salience of the regulated issues, in turn, made3/5both competence-seeking and ideological considerations more relevant. In light of rising public attention onEuropean decisions, we thus expect an increasing potential for more political processes in the future.Which policy for Europe?If diﬀerent process types exist, there are also diﬀerent leverage points for inﬂuencing policy substance. To illustratethe argument, consider the question whether internal position formation contributes to explaining the frequentlyasserted predominance of market-liberal positions over more interventionist approaches in European legislation.Under the technocratic model, more interventionism can be expected from unbiased expertise, such as frombalanced access to the Commission’s expert groups or the creation of more interventionist legal precedents.Under the competence-seeking model, Commission positions on the market-interventionism dimension may bebased on the extent of competence transfers they generate. Thus, restructuring the internal distribution ofresponsibilities could stimulate departure from the extant acquis. Moreover, reducing the power resources of thelead department could also ensure more balanced EU policies.Under the policy-seeking model, ﬁnally, those aiming at more balanced (in the sense of less liberal) marketregulation should mainly focus on the selection of the Commission’s leading personnel and its ideologicalorientation. This holds particularly for the Commission President who – via the Commission’s Secretariat General –controls the balancing of coordination processes and the assignment of lead departments. Combined with ourinsight that a policy-seeking Commission is indeed responsive to the public, open political competition for the leadingpositions in the Commission could thus be a key lever under the policy-seeking model.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1DW5VvN _________________________________About the authorsMiriam Hartlapp – Leipzig UniversityMiriam Hartlapp is Professor for Multilevel Governance at Leipzig University.–Julia Metz – University of BremenDr Julia Metz is Senior Researcher in the research area “Governance and Organizational Studies”at the University of Bremen.–Christian Rauh – WZB Berlin Social Science CenterDr Christian Rauh is a Research Fellow in the Global Governance department of the WZB BerlinSocial Science Center.4/55/5

Conflict inside the European Commission is a key factor in shaping EU legislation

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