Legislative Codecision in the European Union. Experience over Twenty Years and Implications

This volume takes stock of twenty years of practising and studying codecision in the European Union (EU) and examines the procedure’s long-term implications for the EU’s institutions, politics and policies. The introduction of co-legislation between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament in 1993 raised the prospect of increased parliamentary involvement in EU decision-making and promised a new era of more transparent, inclusive and accountable policy-making.

This collection draws together contributions from diverse theoretical and methodological perspectives in order to analyse the extent to which codecision has delivered the expected gains and to review the unexpected effects that have followed from its introduction, such as the growing informalisation of EU decision-making. Using a combination of in-depth qualitative case studies, wider quantitative analyses, practitioners’ insights and a review of the procedure’s democratic legitimacy the contributions offer a holistic assessment of the effect of co-decision on the political system of the EU.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Table of Contents

1. Legislative Co-decision and its Impact on the Political System of the European Union
2. The Effect of Co-decision on Council decision-making: Informalization, politicization, and power
3. Holding the European Parliament Responsible: Policy Shift in the Data Retention Directive from Consultation to Co-decision
4. Consensus and compromise become ordinary – but at what cost? A critical analysis of the impact of the changing norms of co-decision upon European Parliament committees 5. The consequences of concluding co-decision early: trilogues and intra-institutional bargaining success
6. The distribution of power among EU institutions: who wins under co-decision and why?
7. Co-decision: a practitioners’ view from inside the Parliament
8. The Democratic Legitimacy of Co-decision
9. Twenty Years of Legislative Co-decision in the European Union: Experience and Implications