Which Policy for Europe?: Power and Conflict inside the European Commission

Abstract
The European Commission is at the center of the EU political system. Within its five-year terms each Commission proposes up to 2000 binding legal acts and thus crucially shapes form and substance of EU policy that impacts on the daily lives of more than 500 million European citizens. However, despite the EU Commission’s outstanding role in setting the agenda for European policy, little is known about its internal dynamics when preparing legislation. We do not know why the EU Commission at times proposes legislative drafts that result in a situation characterized by opposition from Member States, that introduce strikingly high or low standards, or that contradict each other.

This book provides a problem-driven, theoretically founded, and empirically rich treatment of the so far understudied process of position formation inside the EU Commission. It reveals that various internal positions prevail and that power and conflict inside the European Commission are essential to understanding the substantial policies that are proposed for Europe. Opening the black box of the Commission, the book identifies three ideal types of internal position formation. The Commission is depicted as motivated by technocratic problem-solving, by competence-seeking utility maximization, or ideologically motivated policy-seeking. Specifying conditions that favor one logic over the others, the typology furthers our understanding of how the EU system functions and provides novel explanations for EU policies with substantial societal implications.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction
2 Position Formation inside the EU Commission: An Analytical Framework
3 Studying Internal Dynamics
4 Connecting Personal Characteristics and Organizational Structure
5 Intersection of Social and Common Market Policies
6 Research and Innovation Policy
7 Consumer policy
8 Expert Groups in the Commission
9 Insulated, Technocratic Decision-making? Commission Position Formation and the Public Acceptability of Policy Options
10 Structural Biases? The Link between Internal Coordination and the Dynamics of Position Formation
11 Many Factors Matter in Position Formation, but Some Matter more Often than Others: Evidence across Cases
12 Shaping Policies for Europe
13 Conclusion