Synchronising out of gridlock: Temporal orderings in the Council

This article explains the role of time in EU policymaking processes, specifically within the Council, a critical venue for policy formation and integration. Existing scholarship extensively explores various aspects of decision-making, such as bargaining, negotiation, and institutional roles. Yet, there is something left unexplained in the way the Council reaches decisions, and this can only be redressed by foregrounding temporal considerations in our analyses. Decision making in the Council has grown increasingly complex, with evolving actor constellations and ever-present sources of time pressure making the need for temporal coordination more pronounced. We propose the concept of 'synchronisation' as a unifying framework for understanding these dynamics at play. By focusing on the case of asylum reform, the article illustrates how divergent positions on the reform of the Common European Asylum System are overcome by synchronisation arrangements that facilitate the harmonisation of temporal preferences among actors involved in the policymaking process. Despite gridlock and differing Member State positions, an agreement reached in June 2023 highlights the possibility of overcoming longstanding obstacles. By uncovering arrangements in the instrumental and actor dimensions of synchronisation, this work provide a new explanation for the process of consensus-building, offering a nuanced understanding of the temporal dimension in EU policymaking.