Over the last three decades, EU regulation of the internal market has become highly pervasive,
affecting practically all the domains of European citizens’ lives. Many studies have focused on
understanding the process and causes of regulatory reform. However, these have typically been
small-scale or small-n studies, with no or limited attempts to analyse the more general sources of
regulatory reform. In this paper, we focus on the determinants of stability and change in EU
regulation. We develop an original dataset of 169 pieces of legislation (regulations, directives and
decisions) across eight different sectors, and analyse the dynamics of regulatory reform in the EU.
Using time series analysis of count data, we find evidence that the number of winning coalitions in
the Council and the size of EU membership have a significant impact on regulatory reform in the
EU. However, the political (left-right) composition of EU’s legislative bodies has no significant
impact on the process of regulatory reform