Revisiting the informal power resources of member states’ permanent representations to the EU

ABSTRACT

This article sheds new light on the power resources of member states at the European level by investigating the role and resources of their permanent representations to the EU. Building on previous research on member states’ influence in the EU decision-making process, this contribution documents variations of permanent representations’ human resources, structure and coordination processes. Based on semi-structured interviews conducted with 87 Council negotiators and EU representatives in Brussels between 2016 and 2020, this article identifies significant divergences in the workforce, role and efficiency of permanent representations, as well as in their level of engagement with other EU institutions. These findings show noticeable asymmetries (both qualitative and quantitative) in the informal capabilities of member states in Brussels and have implications for our understanding of their capacity to formulate and defend political preferences at the European level.

KEYWORDS:

• Permanent representations
• member states
• Council
• negotiations
• power resources

Acknowledgments

I thank the three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on previous versions of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Drawing on a Weberian approach to power, this article defines power as ‘a set of resources on which actors may draw’ to influence other actors and decision outcomes. The notion of influence refers to the proportion of that potential which actors put into effect to realize their policy demands in the content of decision outcomes, even in the presence of opposition from other actors (Thomson 2011).

2. In addition to voting power in the context of qualified majority voting (QMV) rules, veto power and the possibility to opt-out from negotiations are other instances of the formal power resources of MS.

3. The criteria used for selecting the legislative dossiers were: the political relevance of the dossier and its level of controversy; its policy domain; the time period; and the legislative procedure used (Arregui & Perarnaud 2022).

4. Bargaining success is understood as the congruence between decision outcomes and actors’ policy demands (Thomson 2011).

5. There are marginal cases in which the data collected was considered insufficient, and thus dismissed, as answers needed to be justified by national representatives with substantive arguments.

6. The level of congruence of the information provided by MS negotiators was assessed by using Krippendorff´s alpha coefficient (Hayes and Krippendorff 2007).

7. The Croatian and Finnish permanent representations hosted more negotiators than usual in view of their upcoming Council presidencies.

8. These figures document the variations of workforces across/within policy sectors, based on the number of negotiators hosted in permanent representations. Due to inconsistencies in the transparency of governmental web portals, and in order to allow for a broad comparison, the decision was made to count only the total number of Coreper 1 and 2 negotiators. This information was available for two thirds of MS.

9. MS representative, 18–09-2017, Brussels.

10. MS representative, 15–09-2017, Brussels.

11. Council General Secretariat representative, 18–06-2018, Brussels.

12. MS representative, 11–09-2017, Brussels.

13. Respondents were asked: ‘Within your sector, how involved is the permanent representation in the shaping process of the national position?’ Answers were coded using a Likert scale from 1 to 5. If negotiators of the same MS had distinct answers, more than one box is highlighted. To compare MS, the value used is the average of answers’ scale code. The data was complemented using interview transcripts from European Commission and Council General Secretariat officials. A number of national negotiators also referred to the speed of other member states’ administrations. This complementary data is signalled with the letter (X) in the tables.

14. MS representative, 28–06-2018, Brussels.

15. MS representative, 14–09-18, Brussels.

16. Research respondents were asked: ‘Within your sector, how would you assess the speed for adopting the national position in general?’ Answers were coded from 1 to 5: (1) Regularly quick: delays in formulating the positions are rare, and positions are generally adopted very quickly due to established mechanisms such as strict deadlines for establishing positions. (2) Quite quick: delays in formulating the positions are not a structural problem, positions are usually adopted early during the negotiations. (3) Average: delays in formulating the positions are not common. (4) Quite slow: delays in formulating the positions occur. (5) Regularly slow: delays in formulating the positions are very common.

17. MS representative, 13–09-17, Brussels.

18. Respondents were asked: ‘Within your sector, what are the instruments/channels used by your permanent representation to engage with the European Parliament and its members?’ Answers were coded into three main categories: (Cat 1) ad hoc relation, with limited engagement; (Cat 2) ad hoc relation, with regular engagement; (Cat 3) structured strategic relation, with regular engagement.

19. MS representative, 05–12-2018, Brussels.

20. MS representative, 05–12-2018, Brussels.

21. MS representative, 09–05-2018, Brussels.

22. MS representative, 27–09-17, Brussels.

23. MS representative, 15–09-2017, Brussels.

24. MS representative, 18–06-2018, Brussels.

25. MS representative, 29–06-2018, Brussels.

26. MS representative, 19–10-2018, Brussels.

27. MS representative, 05–06-2018, Brussels.

28. MS representative, 20–09-2017, Brussels.

29. Council General Secretariat representative, 18–06-2018, Brussels.

30. MS representative, 27–04-2018, Brussels.

31. MS representative, 20–01-2020, Brussels.

32. In line with studies on the role of personality in international negotiations (Brummer 2016), personality is understood here as the pattern of characteristics and individual traits shaping negotiators’ behaviour.

33. MS representative, 27/04/2018, Brussels.

34. MS representative, 30–05-2018, Brussels.

35. MS representative, 30–05-2018, Brussels.

36. MS representative, 21–11-2018, Brussels.

37. MS representative, 25–09-2017, Brussels.

38. MS representative, 25–04-2018, Brussels.

39. MS representative, 13–09-2017, Brussels.

40. European Commission representative, 24–11-2018, Brussels.

41. MS representative, 26–11-2018, Brussels.

42. MS representative, 18–04-2018, Brussels.

43. MS representative, 19–06-2018, Brussels.

44. MS representative, 29–06-2018, Brussels.

45. MS representative, 15–06-2018, Brussels.

46. European Commission representative, 04–12-2018, Brussels.

47. MS representative, 17–04-2018, Brussels.

48. MS representative, 21–11-2018, Brussels.

Additional information

Funding

The authors acknowledge the support received by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (project CSO2015-67213-C2-2-P) for funding this research.