The area of EU asylum has been characterised by a slow process of communitarisation. The changes in the formal decision-making structures have served to gradually empower EU supranational institutions. This paper seeks to investigate whether institutional change – understood as the growing importance of the European Parliament, European Commission, and European Court of Justice – has triggered policy change, and if so, what shape and direction has the latter taken. Drawing on rational-choice and constructivist institutionalist approaches, it is interested in identifying the main mechanisms linking the process of institutional change occurred with the shift to codecision and the (lack of) changes in EU asylum law. In order to empirically identify and compare instances of policy change (or non-change) and to determine the extent to and ways in which EU institutions have had an impact on these processes of change, we compare the first round of negotiations on the Receptions Directive (finalised in 2003) with the recast operation that has led to a new revised directive in 2012. The empirical analysis will be based on qualitative research methods, in particular a range of semi-structured interviews conducted with officials and politicians participating in the negotiations.
