How Do Member States Legislate Equality Files in the Council of the EU? The Cases of the Pay Transparency and Anti-Violence Directives

The Council of the European Union is arguably the most powerful yet the least-known of European Union (EU) institutions. Despite being the ultimate power player in equality politics, its internal practices and processes have hardly been researched from the point of view of their genderedness or their significance for advancing gender equality in the union. The key objective of this paper is to start addressing this research gap. The paper takes as its starting point the contradictions that marked equality politics during the 2019-2024 legislative term. The period witnessed both advances in gender equality policy under the first von der Leyen Commission’s agenda of Union of Equality as well as strong contestations by increasingly powerful anti-gender actors present in the Council through national governments. The aim here is to analyse negotiations in the Council around two recently adopted directives: the pay transparency directive and the directive to combat violence against women and domestic violence. The paper applies process-tracing to key policy documents around the two directives and draws upon 15 research interviews conducted with key actors involved in the negotiations. The interviewees come from permanent representations of three member states in Brussels, the Council General Secretariat as well as member state representatives who participated in relevant working groups. The paper generates findings on three specific research questions: How were the negotiations for the two directives influenced by different member state positions? How did the member state negotiators construct the controversies around the directives? How do the established norms and practices in the Council of the EU insulate it from the impact of radical right populists? The paper will draw upon and develop theories of gendered diplomatic practices as well as radical right unpolitics in the Council when addressing the research questions.