A Politicised Commission? The Influence of National and Supranational Politics on the Withdrawal of Legislative Proposals

As the EU’s key agenda-setter, the European Commission has the right to withdraw its own legislative proposals. Traditionally, the literature has suggested that the Commission’s choice to withdraw is driven by functional considerations. Yet, recent studies have pointed out that the Commission’s decisions are more political than hitherto assumed, and are affected by both national and EU-level politics. By theorising and analysing the influence of national and European politics on the Commission’s decisions to withdraw legislation, our paper offers new insights into EU-level agenda-setting. The qualitative part of our study builds on interview data to provide an in-depth understanding of the withdrawal process in practice, of whether and how withdrawals have changed over time, and of what the key actors’ preferences, priorities and strategies are in this process. In the quantitative part, we analyse new data to explain whether and, if so, which political factors matter for the Commission’s decisions to discontinue proposals at the end of each legislative term. Arguing that the Commission’s choice is affected by the co-legislators’ political preferences and by the EU’s recent politicisation, we hypothesise that highly salient and more political proposals are more likely to be withdrawn, and that the likelihood of withdrawal increases over time.