How Transparent are EU Informal Trilogues in Practice?

Transparency is a cornerstone for democratic accountability. Although the EU has become much more transparent over the past two decades, informal trilogues continue to be considered as pockets of seclusion. Informal trilogues are meetings in which representatives of the Council, the EP and the European Commission sit together and negotiate a compromise text which is then to be approved by the Council and the EP. Despite their obvious political importance, neither the trilogue meetings themselves nor documents discussed inside them are publicly accessible. This paper empirically investigates the transparency of trilogues through a systematic assessment of EP committee debates. The EP webcasts all its public debates including at committee level, and rapporteurs are requested to report back on the progress of interinstitutional negotiations in committee. To what degree can citizens inform themselves on political decision-making by this means? What information is shared with the general public, how rich is this information, and do any obvious gaps remain?