Royal roads and dead ends. How institutional procedures influence the coherence of European Union policy formulation

Abstract

The European Union has repeatedly committed itself to increase the coherence of its external action, with Policy Coherence for Development being singled out as one of the most prominent cases. This paper investigates how the EU promotes this aim in the policy formulation of different governance areas. Using a historical institutionalist approach, it focuses on the process dimension of coherence by presenting extensive empirical data to analyse which institutional procedures – such as Commission inter-service consultations – are regularly applied to what effect. The study discusses the results of tracing the planning of six selected initiatives in fisheries, environment and security policy. It finds that the effective promotion of Policy Coherence for Development does not necessarily depend on the particular policy field and its degree of communitarisation as such but rather on the policy instrument used and especially on the EU institution which conducts the policy formulation.

Keywords:

• Policy coherence (for development)
• institutional coherence procedures
• European Union external action
• policy formulation

Notes

1. See Marangoni and Raube 2014 for a critical discussion on the normative dimension of the prevailing coherence demand in the EU system.

2. This assumption is backed by policy analysis literature which has ‘convincingly argued that the processes in the preliminary stages of decision-making strongly influence the final outcome’ (Jann and Wegrich 2007, 4; referring to Kenis and Schneider 1991).

3. The findings discussed in this paper are based on an extensive empirical analysis of six case studies of PCD promotion in the EU system that the author conducted (Stroß 2014).

4. In the context of the implementation of the ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, an ongoing discussion on the new concept of ‘Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development (PCDS)’ has started. The Council of the EU considers PCD as ‘an important part of the EU contribution to achieving broader policy coherence for sustainable development’ (Council of the EU 2015: para. 7).

5. Also the role of the central services of the EU institutions deserves attention. The secretariats and legal services usually play an important role in coordinating the activities of the institutions and improving the general coherence and consistency of their work. They however act usually in a politically ‘neutral’ way and it is unusual for the their staff ‘to emphasise a specific viewpoint, such as arguing for a more explicit integration of development concerns into a policy’ (Egenhofer et al. 2006, 26). Given their non-political role, the central services are not considered a key development actor here.

6. Agriculture, economic and monetary affairs, energy, environment, fisheries, justice and home affairs, research, security, trade, transport.