Agenda Setting in the EU

Abstract

Agenda setting has long ago been recognised as an essential part of the policy-making process. A policy agenda represents the attention given to issues by a specific political body. Agenda setting thus involves selecting issues, excluding others from discussion and ordering the selected issues according to priorities. This process has been studied in various political and institutional contexts in European and North American countries. However, research on agenda setting in the EU is still insufficient to provide us with clear understanding of how and why certain issues are discussed in European context. The sui generis nature of the EU is especially interesting for agenda-setting analysis. Jurisdictional boundaries in the Union are not always clearly defined and have been changing over time. This encourages venue shopping and has made the EU system especially vulnerable to policy entrepreneurs. Different institutions and member states are seen as influencing the EU agenda in a variety of ways. The combination of supranational and intergovernmental bodies allows agenda setting to take place both from above, via high-level institutions, and from below, through policy experts in low-level working groups.

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