Procedural (dis)obedience in bicameral bargaining in the United States and the European Union

The EU co‐decision procedure gave the Parliament and the Council the possibility to reconcile differences in a conciliation committee similar to US conference committees.

This article examines why important rules regulating the scope of these committees, which at first outset look similar, are applied more flexibly in the US than the EU context. Learning about the conditions under which scope rules are applied flexibly is important for EU scholars because these rules control who affects the final legislative outputs.

In accordance with insights from recent institutional literature, the article argues that variation in rule ambiguity, demand for flexible rule interpretation, and bargaining power of the actors interested in modifying the scope rules can help explain these differences in rule application between the two systems. However, it also shows how flexible interpretation of even unambiguous rules may occur.