European Parliament Trilogue Negotiation Teams as Complex Agents: An Analysis of the Rapporteurs’ Autonomy in Interinstitutional Negotiations

This paper analyses the relations between the actors in the EP negotiating team during trilogue negotiations with the Council. By doing so, it aims to shed new light on the autonomy of the rapporteur vis-à-vis his committee in the interinstitutional negotiations. While state of the art research emphasizes the increase in the number of MEPs participating in trilogues (including the shadow rapporteurs and the committee chair), the effect of this increase on the functioning of the parliamentary “negotiation team” remains widely understudied. Using a principal-agent framework that considers the EP negotiation team as a “complex agent” of the parliamentary committee, the paper examines to what extent and how the participating MEPs operate as a control mechanism to constrain the autonomy of the rapporteur. The analysis uses original empirical data collected through in-depth interviews with key actors within the EP (officials and MEPs) supplemented by document analysis. The paper contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it gives empirical insight into the functioning of the EP negotiating team during trilogues. Second, by theoretically modelling the EP representatives as a complex agent and by considering the relationship between the negotiating team and the responsible EP committee as a PA relationship, it furthers our understanding of intra-EP politics in the framework of interinstitutional negotiations. By doing that, it provides a theoretical basis to further studies of the EP’s role and functioning in legislative policy-making.