Who Decides What EU Issues Ministers Talk About? Explaining Governmental EU Policy Co-Ordination in Finland

Abstract:

The political dynamics of European Union (EU) governance has arguably strengthened the role of civil servants at the expense of democratically elected office-holders. However, whether this applies to intra-cabinet EU decision-making is more difficult to analyze. Drawing on the agendas (1995–2012) of the Finnish ministerial EU Committee and on interviews with key civil servants, this article examines whether the interests of governing parties or bureaucratic procedures are more important in determining which EU policies are debated by the government and which in turn are decentralized to individual ministries. The analysis confirms the strong influence of both established administrative procedures and of a small elite of civil servants in setting the agenda of governmental EU policy formulation. The paper also shows that intra-cabinet co-ordination focuses on high politics issues, with individual EU laws seldom discussed by the government – a finding that raises important questions about the accountability of domestic EU co-ordination.