Handling the Bullies: Mainstream Strategies of Countering Populist Obstructions in the European Council and the Council

Frequent obstructions by populist governments pose a systematic threat to consensus-based decision-making in the European Council and the Council of the European Union (EU). However, how mainstream governments respond to such transgressive behaviour remains insufficiently understood. This paper identifies two major counterstrategies and studies the incentives shaping elite selection between them. Deliberative strategies aim to accommodate populist governments through political concessions whereas confrontational strategies exploit interdependencies to exert political pressure. Choosing between these options, mainstream governments face conflicting incentives. At the EU level, normative expectations to foster compromises and preserve unity push them towards deliberative strategies. At the domestic level, however, politicisation of the negotiated policy or the populists’ transgressive behaviour itself may create pressure to adopt a confrontational approach. To probe this argument, the paper studies the strategies of the Dutch and German governments in countering the joint attempts of the Hungarian and Polish governments to block the adoption of the rule of law conditionality mechanism. Despite similar policy preferences, the two mainstream governments pursued different counterstrategies. The Dutch government issued retaliatory threats even proposing the exclusion of Hungary and Poland from the RRF. This strategy reflected the high public salience on the issue in the domestic debate. By contrast, the German government advocated granting substantive concessions to the populist governments. Its stance was shaped by leadership expectations associated with its Council presidency and the urgency of the COVID-19 crisis. This paper showcases the pitfalls of countering transgressive behaviour in EU policymaking pointing at the heterogenous incentive structures among mainstream governments.