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CIAO DATE: 10/00
Negotiations in the European Union: the Hidden Influence on Council Decision-Making
Ben Soetendorp and Madeleine O. Hosli
International Studies Association
41st Annual Convention
Los Angeles, CA
March 14-18, 2000
Abstract
With the increasing prominence of the European Union (EU) in world affairs, the question has become of utmost importance how decisions in the EU are made and how negotiations are conducted both between and within the EU’s institutions. This paper is particularly interested in assessing factors that contribute to the ability of EU governments to influence decisions in one of the EU’s core institutions: the Council of the EU (formerly the "Council of Ministers").
With this aim, we describe factors that are likely to affect the relative capacity of governments of EU member states to get their policy views accepted in negotiations in the Council or COREPER (or Working Groups linked to the Council). We conduct the analysis by providing both results of more formal calculations of influence and descriptions of additional elements that are likely to affect decisions in the Council, broadly related to members’ negotiation and pre-negotiation strategies. Finally, we provide information on the capacity of governments to influence the Council’s policy on the basis of two examples involving the Dutch government.
Introduction
Policy outcomes in the EU are frequently results of rather intensive bargaining and negotiation processes. Whereas the different EU institutions, most notably the European Commission and the European Parliament (EP), and national and transnational lobbying groups certainly all play an important role in the EU’s overall "bargaining game", national government representatives still perform a prominent function in the EU’s decision-making process, especially in the framework of the European Council and the Council of the EU. Thus, while there is little doubt that the Council is not the only relevant decision-making body in the EU, and its decisions are influenced by the policy stance of other institutions and actors, intergovernmental negotiations are certainly still rather crucial to both the overall development of the EU and its day-to-day decision-making.
With increased integration, membership in the EU has put new demands upon member states aiming to be successful in the representation of national interests in the making of European policy. As two prominent observers of the European decision-making process have put it, negotiation lies at the "heart of the policy process" (Wallace and Wallace 1996: 32-33). This observation may apply to a large extent to the Council (in its various compositions). According to a former Secretary General of the Council, the Council’s work is traditionally a "constant process" of negotiations. 1
National governments in the EU are therefore increasingly aware of the need to develop a bargaining strategy in order to gain and exercise influence in the pursuit of their national objectives. This challenge may increase rather than decrease when EU membership expands. Since governments are not always capable of influencing an outcome of a specific policymaking process, it is interesting to explore what factors make a government "successful" in the framework of the EU’s intergovernmental bargaining process. This question becomes even more relevant with the prospect of enlargement: the large numerical increase in the number of member states involved in Council decision-making will make negotiations in the Council even more complex. Moreover, since decision-making by unanimity in a Union of 27-30 members will be ineffective, the recently started Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) will undoubtedly agree on some of the necessary adjustments in the Union’s voting system within the Council of the EU. This will most likely result in a significant extension of qualified majority voting (QMV), as well as a re-weighting of votes. The latter option aims to closely link the countries’ number of votes in the Council to the size of their population. The significant decline in the ability of the smaller states to veto proposals in the Council, and a decrease in the relative voting power of most of them, would certainly reduce the bargaining power of several smaller states, changing the current balance of power among the EU states.
Considering such challenges, this paper aims to look into conditions that may favor the relative success of actors in the framework of EU negotiations (or reduce their likelihood of being influential). Generally, conditions that may influence the relative success of governments in Council negotiations include some tangible structural factors, such as the size of the country and the style of national decision-making. In addition, there are less tangible factors, like capacities of coalition-building, instructions to negotiators, qualities and bargaining skills of the negotiators, participation in pre-negotiation, and the use of particular negotiation techniques. Other relevant conditions that may help a government obtaining a favorable bargaining outcome (i.e., an outcome that closely represents its own interests) will originate in situational factors, such as whether the country has a view that is moderate or extreme as compared to its fellow governments, or whether the government acts in the capacity of the Council Presidency.
Long and sometimes rather tedious processes tend to characterize negotiations in the Council 2 . All negotiations move through several stages at different levels and involve different participants, whereby a distinction between pre-negotiations and negotiations has become somewhat blurred. The negotiation process actually starts with the drafting of a proposal by the Commission, when officials of the permanent representations of the member states in Brussels try to influence the way the draft proposal is formulated. The intergovernmental bargaining process among the EU member states begins in the course of the first treatment of the proposal in the Working Groups linked to the Council. It is in this framework that different views are exchanged, the problems are identified, the search for possible concessions or compromise solutions begins, and in the case of agreement, conclusions are drawn. According to two experts on the work of the Council, 70 percent of the dossiers on which the Council has to make a final decision are already settled in the Working Groups (Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace, 1997:40). The next stage in the negotiation process is in the Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER), where the member states’ ambassadors to the EU prepare the Council meetings and usually reach agreement over another 15-20 percent of the Commission proposals. In preparing the Council agenda, COREPER distinguishes agenda items which Ministers simply have to approve, as the substance is already agreed upon (‘A’ points), and agenda items which still have to be negotiated (‘B’ points) because COREPER members were unable to agree on acceptable solutions. Hence, the ministers of the member states, meeting in the various compositions of the Council, are left with only 10-15 percent of the original Commission proposals on which substantive negotiations in the Council then take place.
In the negotiation literature, a distinction is usually made between the pre-negotiation phase and the actual phase(s) of formal negotiations. Pre-negotiations are essentially described as the diagnostic phase, the stage of initiating negotiation before the formal negotiations set in; the phase in which parties define the problem, develop a commitment to negotiate and arrange the negotiations (Hampson, 1995:25 and Stein, 1989: 2-3). By comparison, the formal negotiations are the phase of the "negotiations proper" dealing with the detailed terms of an agreement. "During this phase, the participants will exchange information, discuss alternative negotiation packages, and move from a general formula to the actual details of an agreement" (Hampson, 1995:27). As 85-90 percent of the decisions that are taken formally in the Council are based on agreement actually reached in the Working Groups and COREPER, a clear-cut distinction between a pre-negotiation phase and a negotiation phase is not very evident for the Council. Some dossiers may even move back from the Council to COREPER (or even the Working Groups) for further discussion, before the Council adopts a final decision. But although in reality, negotiations in the Council are conducted at all three levels of the Council hierarchy, and a commitment to negotiate is obvious, for the purpose of this paper we will nevertheless consider the drafting of the proposal by the Commission and the intergovernmental bargaining within the Working Groups as the diagnostic stages of the negotiation process (and hence as the pre-negotiation phase). Only the intergovernmental bargaining process at the level of COREPER and at the Council level will be regarded here as stages in the formal phase of the negotiations.
In all phases of the actual negotiations, however, bargaining appears to be a rather multi-faceted process. While personalities and bargaining skills of government representatives are likely to be important in both the pre-negotiations and the actual negotiations, domestic policy constraints may influence the flexibility and the bargaining behavior of government representatives. Because of the interrelatedness between domestic interests and intergovernmental developments in the Union, bargaining may best be conceived in the sense of two-level games (Putnam 1988), where domestic policy preferences determine the intergovernmental bargaining behavior of EU members. Evidently, in this framework, changing domestic preferences may alter the formation of coalitions on the intergovernmental level (Moravcsik 1991, 1998). In addition, it has to be kept in mind that negotiation outcomes are often achieved through the means of "package deals" 3 , linking together issues in which different governments may either have relatively extreme or moderate preferences as compared to their fellow EU governments.
The more the Council can resort to QMV if needed, voting weights of EU governments are another crucial element that affects the bargaining process. If Council decisions require unanimity among the delegations, "voting power" varies little among the EU governments, since all of them essentially hold a veto (and all may risk negative reputation effects by "obstructing" a decision). But the increased applicability of QMV is likely to change this pattern, and it certainly reinforces the relevance of the formal distribution of voting weights. Even if in practice, governments are inclined — whether in Working Groups, COREPER or actual Council meetings — to search for consensus 4 , the option to call a vote certainly influences the bargaining patterns and the search for possible compromise solutions in the Council. It may also be a tool to be used by the Presidency to try to force a solution if necessary. Moberg (1998), very familiar with the process of negotiations in the Council, puts it this way: despite the essential role of the Presidency in deliberations in the Council — or its subordinate bodies -- in interpreting whether there is a qualified majority present or not to support a proposal, EU governments’ voting power is rather essential. It is "constantly in the minds of all participants and influences the alliances they try to form in the negotiations. Member states are aware that they can be outvoted, and this probably tends to stimulate consensus decisions." (Moberg 1998: 349).
Hence, the option to resort QMV in the Council or in COREPER is likely to have changed the negotiating behavior of the EU’s governments. By contrast to unanimous decisions, where every member essentially holds a veto, QMV require the formation of a blocking minority to prevent a decision from being adopted. In the current constellation of EU membership, a blocking minority essentially consists when members combine at least 26 out of the total of 87 votes 5 . Correspondingly, in order to support a specific proposal, a coalition of members representing a certain number of votes is necessary. In the present constellation of EU membership, this threshold is 62 votes. Enlargement and possible re-weighting will certainly affect members’ relative leverage in the negotiations. Hence the strong current debate on re-weighting votes (partially induced by expected major rounds of EU enlargement).
Before we turn to a discussion of the factors that determine the relative strength of member states in the intergovernmental bargaining process, we have to make some remarks on the possible empirical sources to such a study. Because of the secrecy that is still surrounding Council deliberations, the official information released by the Council is of somewhat limited use. Hence, we will resort, in our description of the negotiation process and the factors that may strengthen negotiators in it, to information both from secondary sources and as gathered by one of us (Ben Soetendorp) in interviews conducted over the recent years with participants in the various decision-making bodies at both the national and European levels 6 .
We were not able to explore all of the relevant factors extensively, but we can nevertheless address some of the specific factors that may influence a government’s "effectiveness" in Council negotiations on this basis, and trace some patterns in the decision-making process of the Council, COREPER and Working Groups. In an attempt to shed as much light as possible on the problem we discuss, we combine a descriptive analysis of factors conducive to make governments "successful" in EU policy making with methodologies that assess how institutional structures and QMV may favor or disadvantage actors in the intergovernmental decision-making process. In addition, we provide an overview of pre-negotiation and negotiation strategies — including the ability of members to form coalitions — that affect the bargaining potential of EU governments.
The following section of this paper provides an overview of factors that may influence governments’ "effectiveness" in Council negotiations. We then present some evidence on actual negotiations in practice (section 3), addressing the relative "success" of the Dutch delegation in intergovernmental bargaining. We summarize our findings in section 4 of the paper.
Factors that may Influence "Effectiveness"
In this section we will identify nine factors that may be conductive to reaching a desired outcome in Council negotiations. 7 None of these nine factors is considered to be either a sufficient or necessary condition for a successful bargaining strategy. 8 But these factors may nevertheless help explain a member state’s success (or relative weakness) in EU intergovernmental negotiations. Our focus is primarily on the EU’s decision-making in the different constellations of the Council, but some of the factors may certainly also be relevant for the deliberations in the European Council, the area of "high politics", and negotiations leading to Treaty Reform. In these latter cases, however, unanimity among the negotiators will generally be required.
(A) The size and "weight" of the member state
From the very beginning of the European integration process, a clear distinction was made between larger and smaller members. The founding fathers of the European Communities (EC) already decided that the relative weight of the member states in the Community decision-making process should reflect the size of their population. Thus, the three larger founding countries, France, Germany and Italy, received four votes in the Council each, while the two smaller countries, the Netherlands and Belgium, received two votes, and Luxembourg one. The different size of the member states was also mirrored in the number of Commissioners appointed by the governments of the member states to the European Commission. While the three larger states appointed two Commissioners each, the three smaller members had only one Commissioner. These patterns repeated themselves during each enlargement. The United Kingdom was granted 10 votes in the Council in 1973 and could appoint two Commissioners; Spain received 8 votes in 1986 and was able to appoint two Commissioners. Greece and Portugal received 5 votes each in 1981 and1986, respectively, whereas Austria and Sweden received 4 votes in 1995. By comparison, Denmark and Ireland (1973), and Finland (1995) were granted 3 votes each. All the medium-sized and smaller member states obtained one Commissioner each. Similarly, in the European Parliament (EP), votes are weighted in proportion to population size, with the smallest member currently holding six seats (Luxembourg), and the largest, Germany, 99. This is the solution since the modified seat allocation decided upon before the 1994 EP elections (accounting for the effects of German re-unification). The UK, France and Italy each hold 87 seats in the EP.
As we predominantly focus on the Council of the EU in this paper, the allocation of votes over time as outlined above, is illustrated in table 1.
Table 1: The Distribution of Votes in the Council, Past and Present
| Member States | 1958-72 | 1973-80 | 1981-85 | 1986-94 | Since 1995 |
| Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden United Kingdom |
-- 2 -- -- 4 4 -- -- 4 1 2 -- -- -- -- |
-- 5 3 -- 10 10 -- 3 10 2 5 -- -- -- 10 |
-- 5 3 -- 10 10 5 3 10 2 5 -- -- -- 10 |
-- 5 3 -- 10 10 5 3 10 2 5 5 8 -- 10 |
4 5 3 3 10 10 5 3 10 2 5 5 8 4 10 |
| Total | 17 | 58 | 63 | 76 | 87 |
| Votes required for a qualified majority (absolute and in percent of total vote) | 12 (70.6%) | 41 (70.7%) | 45 (71.4%) | 54 (71.1%) | 62 (71.3%) |
| Votes required for a blocking minority (absolute and in percent of the vote total) | 6 (35.3%) | 18 (31.0%) | 19 (30.2%) | 23 (30.3%) | 26 (29.9%) |
Source: adapted from Hosli (1993)
Re-weighting of votes in the Council has only been undertaken once so far in the history of the EU: in the framework of the 1973 enlargement by the Denmark, Ireland and the UK. Since then, voting weights have remained constant. Table 1 also provides information on the total vote and the fraction of votes needed to either constitute a qualified majority or a blocking minority (whenever a vote could be called).
Under the current voting arrangements, whereby some small states have more votes than their size would indicate, small states certainly benefit from a "disproportionate" voting power compared to the larger members. But certainly, a relative overrepresentation is a feature present in several systems that are largely based on a federal setup. Examples of similar arrangements can be seen in the framework of the U.S. Senate, the German Bundesrat, or the Swiss StÄnderat. As QMV becomes increasingly the "norm" in Council decision-making (whether an actual vote is called or not), the impact that the relative voting weight can bear on the outcome of Council decision-making will matter more and more. This has led some larger member states to demand an adjustment of the voting weights to population shares. Arguments largely run along the lines that public opinion in larger states will only perceive EU decisions to be "legitimate" if these states possess a corresponding weight in EU decision-making 9 . Such a re-assessment of voting weights would be likely to reduce the voting power of small states and as a consequence, affect the balance of influence between the larger and the smaller states in the Council, in favor of the large members. 10
There have been different attempts to "capture" the distribution of votes in the Council as a function of EU members’ population size (Widgrén 1994, Berg and Lane 1996). A relatively simple formula explaining the allocation of votes (since the 1973 enlargement) on the basis of population size is provided in Hosli and Wolffenbuttel (1999). The formula is vi = 1.73 x pi .43, with v denoting member i’s number of votes in the Council and pi its population size (in millions). Table 2 provides an overview of respective estimates for the current EU membership and for six members most likely to be admitted to the EU soon.
Table 2: Current Vote Allocations, Possible Modifications and Enlargement to 21 Members
| Formula | v = 1.73 x p 0.43 (Current Vote Allocation) | Allocation according to the "Dutch Proposal" | v = p 0.5 ("Square Root Rule") | |||
| Votes in the Council | Exact Allocation | Rounded Allocation1) | Exact Allocation | Rounded Allocation | Exact Allocation | Rounded Allocation |
|
Current Members: Germany United Kingdom France Italy Spain Netherlands Greece Belgium Portugal Sweden Austria Denmark Finland Ireland Luxembourg |
11.48 9.95 9.92 9.86 8.38 5.61 4.74 4.68 4.64 4.41 4.23 3.52 3.49 3.00 1.17 |
11 (10) 10 10 10 8 6 (5) 5 5 5 4 4 4 (3) 3 3 1 (2) |
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- |
25 25 25 25 20 12 10 10 10 8 8 6 6 6 3 |
9.03 7.65 7.62 7.56 6.26 3.92 3.22 3.18 3.15 2.97 2.83 2.28 2.26 1.90 0.63 |
9 8 8 8 6 4 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 1 |
| Total (15 Members) | 89.04 | 89 (87) | -- | 199 | 64.45 | 65 |
| 71 percent | -- | 63 (62) | -- | 141 | 45.76 | 46 |
| 66.67 percent | -- | 59 (58) | -- | 133 | 42.97 | 43 |
| (Simple) Majority | -- | 44 | -- | 100 | -- | 33 |
|
Possible New Members: Poland Hungary Czech Rep Slovenia Estonia Cyprus |
8.32 4.70 4.72 2.33 2.06 1.48 |
8 5 5 2 2 1 (2) |
-- -- -- -- -- -- |
202) 102) 102) 32) 32) 32) |
6.21 3.19 3.21 1.41 1.22 0.84 |
6 3 3 1 1 1 |
| Total (21 Members) | 112.7 | 112 (113) | -- | 248 | 80.5 | 80 |
| 71 percent | -- | 80 (80) | -- | 176 | -- | 57 |
| 66.67 percent | -- | 75 (75) | -- | 165 | -- | 53 |
| (Simple) Majority | -- | 57 | -- | 125 | -- | 41 |
1) Note that the allocation of votes, except for the three new EU members as of 1995, was based on their population size preceding the 1986 enlargement.
2) Moberg (1998), Best (1999).
On the basis of EU members’ current population size, however, the estimates indicate that Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark might obtain a higher number of votes than these states currently hold 11 . It certainly is interesting to apply this formula to options in view of enlargement. Table 2 therefore also provides figures for other options, here the proposal tabled by the Dutch EU Presidency during the 1997 negotiations on the Amsterdam Treaty for re-weighting votes, and the "square root rule" (a formula according to which the square root of a members’ populations size, as measured in millions, would determine its voting weight in the Council) 12 .
Clearly, these options for enlargement and re-weighting yield rather different prospects for the relative "weight" of current and future EU members within the Council. We will get back to the significance of this aspect later in this paper.
In addition to their larger population size, most of the current large member states also have an economic size that in terms of gross national product (GNP) exceeds the average EU GNP. This provides them with an additional bargaining leverage in Council decision-making. As an experienced participant in EU politics has remarked: "it is clear that the political and economic clout of member states plays a part when it comes to the making of community decisions. It is easier to set aside the opposition of a small country than that of a large one" (Wallace 1990:114). Hence, both large population size and economic power may influence the relative "weight" of a country in Council deliberations. Quite generally, it can also be expected that industrial structure and trade relations will advantage certain member states over others in specific policy areas. For an analysis that attempts to link a model of interest group behavior to members’ preference structure and leverage in the Council, see Bilal and Hosli (2000).
(B) Centralized / tight coordination of national negotiation position
The specific way in which the member states have arranged their national input into Council decision-making may also influence the efforts of a member government to achieve a desired outcome. A centralized / tight decision-making style may help the government to secure a strong, coherent national position in the course of all negotiation stages. As a large number of officials from many governmental departments are involved in Council negotiations at different levels, it is obvious that coordination and control over the framing of the national negotiation position is a key instrument to effectiveness in Council bargaining. A recent study of national decision-making styles, conducted by one of us, indicates a large variation in the way member states have organized the preparation of national negotiation positions in the EU (Soetendorp 1999). Essentially, a distinction can be made among four types of decision-making styles: a centralized/tight style; a centralized/loose style; a decentralized/tight style and a decentralized/loose style. Participants in Council decision-making confirm that a centralized/tight decision-making style is crucial for the ability of a government to "speak with one voice". In such a system, a powerful coordination mechanism enables the government to control the process of drawing up the instructions for national negotiators in Brussels at all levels.
Member states with a decentralized or loose decision-making style arrive at the negotiations in Brussels rather less organized. In the case of a loose decision-making style, the preparation of a unified negotiation position is somewhat obstructed by the absence of an effective center of coordination to overcome the segmentation resulting from ministerial autonomy. In the case of a decentralized decision-making style, the formulation of a coherent national negotiation position becomes even more difficult, as the sharing of competence between the federal government and the component units of the federation requires that these different levels of government reach prior consensus on a desired negotiating position. Since national coordination has to deal with all the preparatory stages of Council decision-making in the framework of Working Groups, COREPER and the Council meeting itself, the lack of an effective centralized coordination mechanism at the center of government places a serious constraint on the ability of countries with a loose and or decentralized decision-making style to produce consistent negotiation instructions for these different forums.
(C) Membership of winning / blocking coalitions.
As more and more Council decision-making is conducted under the formal provision of the QMV rule, the ability of building or joining either a winning or a blocking coalition may be considered to be a crucial condition determining relative success in Council negotiations. As a matter of fact, any attempt of a member state, whether large or small, to gain influence over a desired policy outcome, involves coalition building or participation in an existing coalition. The record of Council decision-making indicates that coalitions promoting or blocking Council decisions shift from issue to issue (Westlake, 1995:380). Most coalitions are short-term tactical coalitions based on the promotion of a specific common interest (e.g., liberal trade policies vs. protectionism) or the protection of a certain interest group (e.g., farmers or specific industries). This makes the building of stable winning or blocking coalitions rather difficult.
Therefore, it is helpful to estimate what the relative influence of a member is, given its voting weight, the voting weights of the other members and the threshold for building either winning or blocking coalitions. An interesting approach in this context is "voting power analysis", a technique evaluating the role of each member in the framework of possible coalitions among member states. Although there has been criticism raised against this approach — mainly arguing that it ignores effects of inter-institutional interaction and that only "connected coalitions" will form in practice 13 -- we agree with counter-criticism that this approach does provide interesting information on the relative leverage of individual member states within an institution (e.g., Holler and Widgrén 1999, Berg and Lane 1999). Moreover, the very assumption that only "connected coalitions" will form has recently been challenged (Brams, Jones and Kilgour 1999). Hence, although we certainly acknowledge that other institutions in the EU are essential to EU decision-making and that factors such as agenda-setting, the distribution of actors’ preferences and strategic interaction among EU institutions matter, we nonetheless believe that voting power analysis has something valuable to add to the current challenges and discussions regarding voting weights and the Council’s voting rules.
Table 3 provides an overview of how relative voting power among governments in the Council has changed over time, providing support to the claim that the relative leverage of all members has decreased with every enlargement. In percentage terms, however, decreases may be similar for both larger and smaller states 14 .
Table 3: The Banzhaf and the Shapley-Shubik Power Index in the Framework of QMV in the Council of the EU (in Percent)
| (Normalized) Banzhaf index | |||||
| Member States | 1958-72 | 1973-80 | 1981-85 | 1986-94 | Since 1995 |
| Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden United Kingdom |
-- 14.3 -- -- 23.8 23.8 -- -- 23.8 0 14.3 -- -- -- -- |
-- 9.1 6.6 -- 16.7 16.7 -- 6.6 16.7 1.6 9.1 -- -- -- 16.7 |
-- 8.2 4.1 -- 15.8 15.8 8.2 4.1 15.8 4.1 8.2 -- -- -- 15.8 |
-- 6.7 4.6 -- 12.9 12.9 6.7 4.6 12.9 1.8 6.7 6.7 10.9 -- 12.9 |
4.8 5.9 3.6 3.6 11.2 11.2 5.9 3.6 11.2 2.3 5.9 5.9 9.2 4.8 11.2 |
| Total | 100.0 | 99.8 | 100.1 | 100.3 | 100.3 |
| Shapley-Shubik Index | |||||
| Member States | 1958-72 | 1973-80 | 1981-85 | 1986-94 | Since 1995 |
| Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden United Kingdom |
-- 15 -- -- 23.3 23.3 -- -- 23.3 0 15 -- -- -- -- |
-- 8.1 5.7 -- 17.9 17.9 -- 5.7 17.9 1.0 8.1 -- -- -- 17.9 |
-- 7.1 3.0 -- 17.4 17.4 7.1 3.0 17.4 3.0 7.1 -- -- -- 17.4 |
-- 6.4 4.3 -- 13.4 13.4 6.4 4.3 13.4 1.2 6.4 6.4 11.1 -- 13.4 |
4.5 5.5 3.5 3.5 11.7 11.7 5.5 3.5 11.7 2.1 5.5 5.5 9.6 4.5 11.7 |
| Total | 99.9 | 100.2 | 99.9 | 100.1 | 100.0 |
Source: Hosli (2000b)
Assuming that certain coalitions among member states are more likely to form, attempts have also been made to measure the distribution of relative voting power in specific policy domains. For example, focussing the analysis on the areas of trade and social policy, Kirman and Widgrén (1995) have presented models in which some EU members are more likely to vote with others on the basis of the assumption of "partial homogeneity". Similarly, Bilal and Hosli (1999) constrain their analysis to coalitions likely to form on the basis of members’ industrial organization and trade relations.
More generally, however, over the years, some core groupings have emerged which are entirely concerned with a specific long-term interest, such as the French-German partnership (promoting further integration); the Benelux grouping recently joined by the Scandinavian member states (protecting small states’ interests); the Southern alliance (guarding against cuts in the structural and cohesion funds), and the new grouping of ‘net contributors’: Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden (promoting cuts in excessive EU spending). An example of an analysis taking such "regional blocs" into account in the study of Council decision-making is Hosli (1996). Being inside such a grouping makes a member state a relatively reliable partner to deal with, as each member state has to gain the support or "buy off" the opposition of other member states for the formation of a winning coalition or a blocking coalition.
Enlargement will certainly again affect patterns of coalition-formation in the Council. How would "voting power" change with expanded membership? Following up on table 3 above, table 4 provides figures on the relative "voting power" of EU members when the EU expands (calculations are here provided for the example of a 21-member EU).
Table 4: Distribution of A Priori Power in a 21-member EU (on basis of Normalized Banzhaf Index)
| Current allocation | Allocation according to "Dutch Proposal" | Allocation based on the "square root rule" | |
| Member State | Voting power (in percent) | Voting power (in percent) | Voting power (in percent) |
|
Current larger states: Germany United Kingdom France Italy Spain Current middle-sized and smaller states: Netherlands Greece Belgium Portugal Sweden Austria Denmark Finland Ireland Luxembourg New members: Poland Czech Republic Hungary Slovenia Estonia Cyprus |
8.47 8.47 8.47 8.47 7.03 4.53 4.53 4.53 4.53 3.72 3.72 2.75 2.75 2.75 1.84 7.03 4.53 4.53 2.75 2.75 1.84 |
9.69 9.69 9.69 9.69 8.04 4.97 4.17 4.17 4.17 3.34 3.34 2.54 2.54 2.54 1.27 8.04 4.17 4.17 1.27 1.27 1.27 |
10.55 9.67 9.67 9.67 7.55 5.14 3.88 3.88 3.88 3.88 3.88 2.60 2.60 2.60 1.30 7.55 3.88 3.88 1.30 1.30 1.30 |
| Total larger member states (including Poland) | 47.94 | 54.84 | 54.66 |
| Total medium-sized and small states | 52.05 | 45.20 | 45.30 |
| Total | 99.99 | 100.04 | 99.96 |
Comment: on actual voting weights for these scenarios, see table 2.
Table 4 also indicates that different options of re-weighting will affect the relative a priori voting power of EU members 15 . More generally, enlargement will, to a certain extent, again lead to a "dilution" of formal voting power of the current EU members, as table 4 illustrates. But options for re-weighting would make such relative losses, as compared to the present (table 3), relatively moderate for the larger members and for medium-sized EU states with a comparatively large population size (such as the Netherlands).
Certainly, as the Union expands, the formation of winning or blocking coalitions will increasingly require a cultivation of bilateral relations among officials and policy makers of member states, also outside Council meetings. In practice, many informal bilateral consultations are already being conducted in various capitals, where the search for a solution to a specific dossier starts clearly before the decisive Council meeting. In a Union of 25 to 30 member states, where the presentation of national positions in plenary Council meetings, with each delegation being allowed 10 minutes speaking time, would take five hours, 16 the bilateral and multilateral contacts among the core members outside Council deliberations will certainly become an essential element in the intergovernmental bargaining process. Thus, belonging to such a core may become crucial to influencing Council decision-making.
(D) A flexible negotiation position
Flexibility in the interpretation of the "negotiation instructions" may contribute to the success of a member state in EU negotiations in two ways. As Council policy making has long decision-making cycles, involving a large number of counterparts, negotiation instructions issued in a member state’s capital before a meeting in Brussels may be outdated the moment the meeting begins, due to changes in the negotiation position of other member states. In addition, once negotiations have started and the process of give and take has begun, intergovernmental bargaining at all levels of Council decision-making generates its own dynamics. To reach a desired outcome, negotiators need some room for maneuver, as new opportunities make a "creative" interpretation of the original negotiation instructions necessary. Imposing a binding national mandate on negotiators - as is often done in Denmark — does not allow negotiators to reach compromises (or to settle for "sub-optimal" outcomes in specific areas in order to obtain more preferred results on other issues).
In this context, giving national negotiators a flexible negotiation mandate in the pre-negotiations, as well as in the actual negotiations, does not exclude imposing a consistent political line on the positions to be taken by national representatives in the various preparatory forums and decision-making bodies in Brussels. This has also been indicated in our discussion of the second condition above.
(E) Involvement in pre-negotiations
As the European Commission is the place where a proposal is formulated before the actual intergovernmental bargaining in the Council starts, being present at the drafting stage of such a proposal may be rather important. Although the Commission has the responsibility to draft proposals to be submitted to the Council, 17 a practice has emerged in which Commission officials, while drafting a proposal, already assess their acceptability by the Council and make an effort to formulate negotiable proposals (Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace, 1997:186). This is usually done through informal consultations with national officials from the permanent representations, or officials in national capitals responsible for the relevant dossier (who will also sit in the Council Working Group once a proposal has been submitted to the Council). In many instances, the same officials are already lobbying the Commission in an attempt to leave their ‘fingerprints’ on the proposal. Most member states understand that the more they are involved in the drafting of a proposal, the more they may realize their national preferences in the final outcome. Accordingly, although all member states know that Commission officials and Commissioners are not allowed to favor a specific member state, most governments consider approaching high Commission officials and Commissioners carrying the same nationality (and certainly detached national experts) a legitimate tool to influence a Commission proposal at its very formative stage.
Once a proposal has been submitted to the Council, the process of pre-negotiation moves to the specialised Council Working Groups. Here the member states’ experts from the relevant home department or officials from the permanent representation present the national position on the dossier, propose amendments and search for compromises that may lead to agreement on a specific proposal. The Working Groups have no decision power, but the outcome of their deliberations is reported to COREPER, which during its preparation of the Council final decision-making generally keeps the consensus reached in the Working Group in tact. As mentioned earlier, about 70 percent of the dossiers on which the Council has to take a decision have already been settled in the Working Groups. All member states participate in the Working Group meeting, but not every member state fully realizes the significance of a Working Group gathering. Whereas some member states send their national experts to the Working Groups well prepared, other member states simply send an official from the permanent representation usually less prepared and lacking the necessary expertise to obtain a good deal.
(F) Leadership in negotiations
Exercising leadership during the intergovernmental bargaining process may increase the prospect of success in reaching a desired outcome. Decision-making in the EU is widely recognized by students of EU decision-making as a process of "joint problem solving". Negotiators that have problem solving skills and effective communication skills may therefore exercise entrepreneurial leadership (Hampson, 1995:42-43). They are able to invent new solutions to overcome bargaining deadlocks or to bridge differences, and are usually also effective in brokering and making deals. Negotiators who have the reputation of being entrepreneurial leaders may exercise considerable influence in COREPER and Council meetings and may act as persuasive advocates of desired national outcomes.
(G) The use of bargaining tactics
The use of bargaining tactics and negotiation strategies may help a member state to gain support for a desired outcome or reduce opposition towards such an outcome. According to many observers of intergovernmental bargaining in the EU, issue linkage is the most common bargaining tactic. It implies the exchange of concessions between coalition partners across different issues in the form of package deals, logrolling or side-payments. Generally, log-rolling refers to "vote trading" in the sense of one actor voting for an issue that does not serve his or her interests in exchange for support on another issue. Log-rolling has been described as a relatively efficient means to reach decisions, as it allows to respond to different intensities of preferences held by different actors 18 . Side-payments refer to compensation given to a bargaining party that loses from a particular collective policy measure in order to gain its support on the issue. Other intergovernmental bargaining tactics include credible threats to veto in case a unanimous vote is required, or the threat of joining alternative coalitions when a winning majority or a blocking minority is necessary under the QMV rule (Westlake, 1995:379 and 385; Moravcsik, 1998:64-65 and 482-483).
(H) Council Presidency
Sitting at the helm of the Union makes it easier for a member states to achieve a desired national outcome in the framework of Council negotiations. Member states that occupy the Presidency chair every Council meeting in all its various compositions (about 22), all COREPER meetings and every Working Group meeting (about 250). They are expected to be impartial and refrain from any attempt to influence Council decision-making. In practice, however, very few member states acting as the chair will ignore national preferences when a compromise is formulated. When a member state occupying the chair opposes decision-making on a specific issue, it can manipulate decision-making by delaying the process by which an issue reaches the agenda - or simply keep issues off the agenda (Westlake, 1995:384). Moreover, while the agenda of each Presidency is usually dictated by ongoing business and current events, few member states can resist the temptation to use the Presidency as an opportunity to put on the Council agenda some topics that may be considered as national "hobbyhorses". However, to make its Presidency a success a member state has to search for compromises, which limits its ability to pursue national preferences. Moreover, in a future Union of 25-30 members, the benefits a member state can derive from the Presidency in promoting its national goals will most likely diminish, as member states will hold the Presidency only every 12 to 15 years, instead of every seven and a half year in the present (unless the current system of a six-monthly rotating Presidency will change).
(I) A critical domestic polity
A critical electorate at home may help a negotiator to achieve a desired outcome. The two-level games approach to international negotiations views international bargaining as a process of "double-edged" diplomacy that forces the negotiator to balance between international and domestic concerns. It recognizes that domestic policies can be used to affect the outcomes of international bargaining, and that the latter may be aimed at achieving domestic goals (Evans, Jacobson and Putnam, 1993:15-17). Thus, according to the logic of two-level games, a negotiator may exploit a critical electorate at home to get a desired outcome at the negotiating table. As Moravcsik argues in a discussion of Putnam’s two-level games approach: "While the traditional view is that internal divisions weaken a state’s bargaining position, the two-level-games approach suggests that divisions may under some circumstances strengthen it" (Moravcsik 1993: 28). This reasoning supports the well-known "Schelling conjecture". According to Schelling, "the power of a negotiator often rests on a manifest inability to make concessions and meet demands..." (cited in Putnam, 1988). The strategy of "tying hands" attempts to persuade the opposing negotiator to compromise at a point closer to the first statesman’s preferences. Indeed, looking into the decision-making record of the EU for a number of intergovernmental conferences, where agreement on politically very sensitive treaty amendments had to be reached, some member states used their critical electorate at home - who had to ratify the treaty - as a leverage to reach agreement at the lowest common denominator or to receive an "opt-out" clause (United Kingdom, Denmark).
Factors that influence leverage in the Council: An application to the Dutch negotiating stance
Now that we have discussed nine factors that may be conducive to reaching a desired outcome in Council negotiations, we will use the outcomes of two case studies to illustrate how empirical work that follows George’s method of "focused structured comparison" can produce conditional generalizations (George 1993:124). As mentioned above, none of these nine factors are considered necessary or sufficient conditions for a successful bargaining strategy. But all are elements present in the two cases below, and they may help explaining a member state’s relative success (or failure) in EU negotiations. Our small case study will focus on the level of the European Council (but we believe that the above propositions may be generalized to negotiations in the Council, COREPER or Working Groups).
The two cases refer to two major attempts of Dutch policy makers to "twist the arms" of their EU partners, in an attempt to reach a final decision on two key documents that were consistent with the Dutch desired outcome. These cases concern negotiations over two key decisions in the recent history of the EU: the negotiations over the Treaty on European Union (TEU), the so-called Maastricht treaty, and the negotiations over Agenda 2000 19 . In the first case, the Dutch government used the opportunity of holding the EU Presidency in 1991 to replace the draft proposal negotiated under the former Luxembourg Presidency with a new Dutch draft. The Dutch Presidency dumped the Luxembourg three-pillar structure and presented to its partners a new draft treaty that would have introduced a single institutional structure. The Council meeting in September 1991, where the Dutch Presidency presented the new draft, is labeled in the annals of Dutch foreign policy as "black Monday". Almost all member states opposed the Dutch proposal. As the Dutch negotiators were forced to withdraw their draft and to continue the intergovernmental negotiations on the basis of the original Luxembourg draft treaty, the whole attempt to influence the outcome of the IGC negotiations on the TEU in the direction desired by the Dutch delegation may be regarded as a non-success.
The second attempt to influence the outcome of Council negotiations that we will briefly look at concerned the Agenda 2000 package of reforms, based on proposals from the European Commission and agreed upon at the EU summit meeting in Berlin in March 1999. The negotiations and the agreement were related to the Union’s spending plans for 2000 to 2006 (the so-called "Financial Framework 2000-2006"). Since the Netherlands had become a "net payer" - implying that a country contributes a larger amount to the EU budget than the amount that it receives from it - Dutch negotiators insisted on a ceiling on overall EU revenues, implying significant cuts in the EU budget. The Dutch delegation also demanded a cut in its large net payments to the EU. After lengthy negotiations, both goals, indeed, were achieved. In the final financial framework program, the member states agreed upon a number of budget cuts, of which decisions to reduce spending on agriculture and structural funding were certainly rather significant. Governments also agreed that member states’ contributions to the EU budget should be modified to be a better reflection of their "ability to pay". As a result, both the Netherlands and Germany were able to cut their rather large payments to the EU.
Table 5: Nine conditions that help explain success or failure of a member state in EU negotiations: The example of Dutch negotiators
| Conditions that favor success | Dutch TEU draft Treaty | Agenda 2000 |
|
- - - - - - - + - |
- + + - + + + - + |
(+) Indicates that the condition is present
(-) Indicates that the condition is absent
The results of the two case studies are summarized in Table 5 20 . From a comparison of the two cases - the ordering of the factors does not suggest a hierarchy of influence among these factors - we may draw some conclusions regarding the conditions that help explain success or failure of a small state, such as the Netherlands, in EU negotiations. As the table illustrates, being a small country may not help being successful in Brussels, but it may not prevent a success in Council negotiations either. The Netherlands, quite generally, has a fairly centralized coordination system for the preparation of its negotiation position at all EU levels, but the two cases described differ in the way the government was actually able to benefit from this system of coordination. In our first case, coordination was rather loose as a consequence of inter-ministerial differences, as well as internal disagreement in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and between the policy makers in The Hague and the Dutch Permanent Representation in Brussels. Divisions concerned the preferred negotiation position and the interpretation of other member states’ positions in the specific cases. In the second example illustrated above, a major effort was made to hold a firm grip over Dutch negotiators at all Council levels by means of a very tight coordination in the Hague (as well as Brussels). It helped ensuring that Dutch negotiators would stick to the agreed negotiating position, hence contributing to the cohesiveness of the position of the Dutch delegation.
Although the TEU and Agenda 2000 were not decided by QMV, the support the Dutch delegation received for their position from their partners, in both cases, was decisive for the extent of Dutch leverage 21 . The erosion in the initial support of some member states and the almost isolated position of the Dutch in the Council during the decision-making process over their TEU draft, forced the Dutch government to withdraw its proposal. By comparison, the strong support the Dutch delegation managed to receive from Germany and the building of a broad coalition of net-payers -- which included, in addition to the Netherlands and Germany, Sweden and Austria -- is certainly important in explaining the Dutch "success" with respect to Agenda 2000.
The presence of other conditions may also help explain the Dutch leverage in the Agenda 2000 example. For instance, the Dutch were strongly involved, in this case, in the process of pre-negotiation. In essence, the Commission drew up a report that confirmed the Dutch claim that its net contribution was "excessive". In addition, the Dutch delegation indeed exercised leadership during the negotiations in COREPER, the Council of the EU and the European Council in the framework of this example. The Permanent Representative, the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister all appear to have managed rather well to present their insistence on the need to cut down EU expenditures as a strategy serving the interest of the EU as a whole. The delegation was able, in essence, to make their position acceptable to other EU members by the plain use of bargaining tactics, including the threat and the actual use of their veto to block Council decision-making with respect to any further spending plans, and by securing the endorsement of the necessary budgetary cuts by making concessions with respect to the timing and the extent of different cuts. In these negotiations, the Dutch government also exploited the broad domestic political sentiment that targeted an "excessive Dutch payment" to the EU budget.
The absence of many of these conditions in the case of the failed introduction of the Dutch TEU draft treaty may help explain lack of leverage in other instances. It appears that the Dutch policy makers that formulated the new TEU draft treaty did this essentially in isolations (and a certain extent of "secrecy"). Although they exchanged views with officials in the Commission and other EU member states, it appears that they "played their cards close to their chest", presenting the complete new draft treaty at a rather late stage of the negotiations in COREPER and the Council. In addition, given the traditional Dutch support for a supranational EU structure, no critical domestic constituency could be used as a bargaining chip in the intergovernmental negotiations either. Finally, we may also note that occupying the Presidency did not help the Dutch to be successful in this case: It made possible the presentation of a new draft in the Council, but the other member states were rather quick in their own demand to replace the new proposal by the former draft treaty. In the other case we briefly described above, on reduced contributions to the EU budget, the Dutch government, by comparison, managed to achieve its desired goals despite that fact that it did not hold the Presidency during the relevant negotiations.
These two examples certainly cannot provide a full-blown analysis of the factors conducive to the relative leverage of governments on Council decision-making. But they may illustrate trends, in accordance with our earlier analysis and attempt at structuring relevant factors, that may partially explain why actors were relatively successful or not in respective negotiations. Several more case studies might be conducted that can shed more light on the relevance of such factors.
Conclusion
In this study, we attempt to provide an overview of elements that influence the relative "success" of EU governments in intergovernmental negotiations, especially in the framework of the Council, COREPER or Working Groups linked to the Council. There are nine main factors that we believe to be of specific relevance in this context: the relative size or weight of an EU member state, the extent to which the national negotiation position is coordinated domestically, membership of potential winning or blocking coalitions, the flexibility of a delegation’s negotiating position, involvement in the pre-negotiation stages, whether a delegation can exercise leadership in bargaining processes, the use of specific bargaining tactics, using the Council Presidency to advance domestic concerns and finally, the extent to which negotiators are faced with a critical domestic constituency.
In a short application to two cases involving the relative success of the Dutch government in intergovernmental EU negotiations, we try to obtain indications on whether these factors may indeed have been important in practice. We find that in the two cases we briefly describe, there were rather significant differences as to the extent in which the various factors were present. The presence or absence of such factors may indeed help explaining why the delegations were able to achieve bargaining outcomes close to their own preferences in one case (cuts in domestic contributions to the EU budget), but not in the other (introduction of a modified treaty which would have abolished the three-pillar structure).
Intergovernmental negotiations and negotiating behavior will certainly be central also in the EU’s future. Although the EU’s institutional framework has been changing rather rapidly in the recent past, and power has shifted to other institutions and actors -- especially to the EP -- we still believe that the representation of the interests of EU governments will remain a crucial element to EU decision-making. From the perspective of domestic governments, it will hence be important to see what strategies can be chosen to try to enhance their leverage on decisions as taken in the Council. There is little doubt that governments will try to set the agenda, by influencing the drafting of Commission proposals at an early stage. But with increased EU membership, it may also be particularly important to form coalitions with other EU governments. Whereas some of these coalitions may be relatively "stable", we nonetheless expect that coalitions — either winning coalitions or blocking coalitions — will shift in terms of membership according to the subject area being discussed. In other words, we expect several factors, from the attribution of new voting weights to bilateral and multilateral pre-consultations, leadership and general bargaining tactics to be essential elements that influence the extent to which governments may make their "voice heard" in the framework of the EU’s intergovernmental bargaining process, also in the framework of a much larger Union.
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Note 1: See Advancing the Union (1999), p. xlix. Back.
Note 2: For an (early) assessment of intergovernmental negotiations in the Community, see Wallace (1985). For a more recent analysis see Hayes- Renshaw and Wallace (1997). Back.
Note 3: Another expression for "package deal" is that there is issue-linkage. Package deals refer to the situation in which decisions are taken over different issue areas simultaneously in order to achieve support by all actors involved (hence, they can essentially be conceived as log-rolling involving several actors). On package deals in the Union more generally, see Weber and Wiesmeth (1991). Back.
Note 4: See, for example, Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace (1997). Back.
Note 5: When the "Ioannina compromise" applies, 23 votes may even be sufficient to make sure further negotiations on the issue under consideration are conducted in the Council. Back.
Note 6: Whereas we will draw on the experience and knowledge of experts, we will not disclose information on their names or functions (as preferred by those interviewed). Back.
Note 7: These factors are mainly derived from the literature or personal interviews with participants in Council decision-making. Back.
Note 8: Compare Most and Starr (1989) and George (1993). Back.
Note 9: E.g., Best (1999). Back.
Note 10: This aim can also be achieved by the introduction of a double-majority clause. See Hosli (1995). Back.
Note 11: Similarly, different voting weights have been suggested for new members. Numbers for smaller new members have been higher than those provided here in some instances (including in the document Council of the European Union, 1999). Back.
Note 12: On these options and their repercussions, also see Hosli (2000a). Back.
Note 13: See mainly Garrett and Tsebelis (1996, 1999). Back.
Note 14: This observation has particularly been made by Moberg (1998). Back.
Note 15: For a comparison of such options, as well as the possible introduction of a "double-majority clause", see Hosli (2000a). Back.
Note 16: See Operation of the Council (1999). Back.
Note 17: This sole right of initiative applies only to proposals related to policy areas that fall under the First Pillar of the Treaty on European Union, however. Also note that the EP has obtained an indirect right of initiative in the Maastricht Treaty. Back.
Note 18: For an early analysis of log-rolling see Tullock (1976). Back.
Note 19: We might have added the proposal tabled by the Dutch Presidency in 1997 to modify voting weights in the Council — a proposal that did not find support in the intergovernmental negotiations. But the subsequent analysis will focus on two different case studies. Back.
Note 20: This table draws heavily on George’s presentation of conditions that favor coercive diplomacy (George, 1993:87 and George and Simons1994:288). Back.
Note 21: Note that in both cases, forming a "blocking minority" is somewhat different from the notion used above in the context of QMV, as in the instances described here, unanimity among the member states was required for proposals to be accepted. Back.
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