The Early Warning System and Voting Behavior in the Council of the EU

• In Event: New Methods for Studying European Politics

Abstract

The nascent empirical literature on national parliaments and the Early Warning System (EWS) has so far contributed significantly to our understanding of the determinants of Reasoned Opinions (ROs). Studies explain why some parliaments are systematically more likely to submit ROs. In contrast to this body of literature, we study a question that goes beyond the mere determinants of ROs. Specifically, we examine the ultimate impact of ROs and the EWS on EU policy-making more broadly.
Why do parliaments send ROs? In theory, to police the principle of subsidiarity and to actively engage in the EU’s policy-making process. Concretely, this means that when enough parliaments submit ROs, a yellow card is triggered and the Commission needs to reconsider its proposal. Hence, one could argue that parliaments obtained some form of formal power to control, shape, and veto EU policies altogether. In practice, however, the threshold to activate a yellow card seems rather high. It has been reached only three times thus far of which the Commission withdrew its proposal only once. As such, it is not surprising that scholars have questioned the practical relevance of ROs, referring to the EWS as ‘toothless’ or a harmless procedure with only a marginal impact on the legislative process.
In contrast to this view, we posit that ROs are useful and can be considered as a source of information to the European Commission, even in the absence of a yellow card. That is, ROs at the start of the policy-making process may convey much information about bargaining difficulties that are to arise later in the EU Council. Understanding the informational value of ROs is thus crucial to correctly evaluate the merits of the EWS, which was precisely introduced to warn the EU Commission about prospective bargaining difficulties and risk of gridlock.
This article is based on a unique dataset in which we match all ROs and Political Dialogue contributions from national parliaments issued at the start of the legislative process with the votes and formal policy statements from their cabinet governments in the EU Council at the end of the process. Based on 356 matched proposals initiated by the Commission between January 2010 and December 2013, we find empirical evidence for a significant positive relation between ROs and negative votes. More concretely, when a national parliament has issued a RO on a legislative proposal its cabinet government is 20 percentage points more likely to vote against that same proposal later on in EU Council negotiations. Moreover, Commission proposals that received ROs have a higher probability to be ultimately withdrawn altogether, even in the absence of a yellow card. Hence, we show that the Early Warning System constitutes an early warning indeed. ROs early in the policy-making process are a strong predictor of bargaining difficulties in later stages.
Our results have a number of important implications for the field of EU policy-making. First, the EWS has more general value than considered so far. In particular, it has an important informational value. Reasoned Opinions do not occur often. In the 2010-2013 period, national parliaments have on average submitted ROs on less than two percent of all proposals. Given their infrequency, in combination with their strong predictive nature about forthcoming gridlock, they constitute a serious warning that negotiations are likely to fail.
Second, we can consider the EWS as a tool similar to the United States (US) Senate “Hold” and the US House “Motion to recommit with instructions”. All three procedures give a decentralized entity, a national parliament in case of the EWS, a way to signal specific concerns that are important to them. Such a signal may have value to the receiver, the EU Commission in this case, if leaving the signaled concerns unaddressed would eventually also hurt them. In other words, the Commission loses scarce resources and precious negotiating time, by not taking into account the signals of parliaments if this leads to ultimate failure. Given the lengthy duration of the policy-making process, triggering the Commission to be pay more attention to parliaments’ signals is not unimportant from an efficiency perspective.
Third, apart from informational value to the EU Commission, we argue that ROs can be used as a strategic tool for the Member States themselves in terms of a ‘tying hands’ principle in EU negotiations. Governments may then feel compelled to credibly commit to oppose legislation.

Authors

• Philippe van Gruisen, Leiden University

• Martijn Huysmans, KU Leuven