When (and why) a Colegislator does not Codecide: The European Parliament and the Reform of the EMU

This paper argues that the de jure empowerment of the European Parliament (EP) and the extension of the ordinary legislative procedure should not be necessarily equated with the de facto impact of the EP on legislative outputs. It focuses on the two most important legislative packages that, under the ordinary legislative procedure, contributed to the reform of the Economic and Monetary Union: the Six-Pack and the Two-Pack. On the bases of official documents, reports of the specialized press, and forty original interviews with key decision-makers, it tracks the development of the negotiations from the stages preceding the legislative proposal of the European Commission to their conclusion. The paper hypothesizes that the EP may punch below its weight in ‘exceptional times’, that is when a crisis compels the EU to act swiftly and the EP to behave responsibly; in policy areas linked to ‘core state powers’, that is when the European Council takes the lead during the legislative negotiations; and when a policy is ‘new’ to codecision, that is when the EP needs to be socialized into a policy field. This paper challenges the conventional wisdom on the role of the EP in the Six and the Two-Pack, showing that intergovernmental actors and dynamics – and, in particular, the activism of the European Council –may informally change the logic of formal decision-making processes.