Institutional Evolution in the EU: The Emerging Balance of Powers

• In Event: The European Parliament

Abstract

Unlike many new democracies whose institutions have been carefully crafted with an eye towards a democratic inter-institutional balance and efficient decision-making processes, the European Union evolved in fits and starts over a half century, without any clear template or structural model. Instead, the history of the EU has very much been a history of ad hoc institutional adaptation, with institutions altered in response to changing demands and needs and reflecting the interests of the various actors involved at the time. Nowhere has this process of instrumental adaptation been more apparent than in the shifting roles of the Council of the European Union (Council of Ministers) and its executive and legislative interlocutors, the European Council and European Parliament. This research examines the shifting power dynamics between these three institutions from the creation of the European Economic Community through the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty through the lens of historical institutionalism, with a particular focus on the critical junctures surrounding the inception of summitry and the birth of the European Council and the empowerment of the European Parliament following the introduction of direct elections. These events set in motion an almost inexorable process of empowerment of both of these institutions, to the detriment of the Council of the European Union, which culminates in the institutional structures and relationships established by the Lisbon Treaty. Though not the result of a clear initial design, the institutional balance of powers in place in the post-Lisbon era appears to represent a kind of durable institutional equilibrium achieved through strategic evolution and provides important indications for the functioning and future character of the EU political system.

Author

• Amie Kreppel, University of Florida