Going Beyond Dialogue in EU Informal Decision-making: The Impact of Trilogue Negotiations on the Commission Bargaining Success

Since the early 2000s, EU legislative decision-making has known an increasing informalization, as trilogue negotiations have progressively become the major forum for legislative negotiations in the EU. Trilogues are informal tripartite meeting in which representatives of the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission negotiate a compromise that can be then formally rubberstamped by the two co-legislators, allowing an early adoption of the legislation under the form of so-called early agreement. This evolution has been increasingly studied in the literature. Yet, while it is suggested that they have impacted the bargaining success of the institutions, trilogue negotiations have been mostly considered as a two-players games between the EP and the Council, leaving the Commission aside of the empirical analysis. This is puzzling, particularly since the Commission has been characterized as being either advantaged or constrained by the informalization. In this perspective, this paper aims to contribute shedding light on this issue by studying how the raise of early agreements have affected the bargaining success of the Commission in the ordinary legislative procedure. The empirical analysis is based on cross-sectional data retrieved from several existing databases, including the DEUII. Multivariate regression techniques are then conducted. Besides improving our knowledge on the impact of trilogue negotiations on the EU legislative decision-making, the paper empirically contributes to the debate in the literature regarding the power enjoyed by the Commission in the EU legislative procedure vis-à-vis the two co-legislators.