The seen and the unseen in legislative politics: explaining censorship in the Council of Ministers of the European Union

Abstract

Transparency in the legislative process of the European Union (EU) is important as it relates to citizens' ability to monitor their government representatives in negotiations. This article explores a particular aspect of transparency in EU legislative politics by focusing on whether negotiation records are released in a timely fashion so as to allow the public to monitor decision-makers. It examines the determinants of this process, and provides insight into the transparency and censorship policy of the EU as it is applied on a day-to-day basis. The findings suggest that there is significant variation in the application of the commitments to legislative transparency, and this variation can be explained by considering the role of actor preferences and political institutions in driving this process. In some cases, this leads to a confounding of the public's ability to monitor negotiators.

Keywords:

• Council of Ministers
• European Union
• legislative decision-making
• transparency

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank the JEPP referees and the participants of workshops in Mannheim and Amsterdam for their helpful comments.

Notes

1 These figures are collected from the 2011 transparency report published by the Council Secretariat available at http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/librairie/PDF/QCAF1200EN.pdf.

2 It is important to consider the distinction between policy positions and underlying preferences in this context. Here, we use policy positions as these are easier to capture empirically, and in EU politics it is assumed that these positions fairly closely represent underlying preferences. These assumptions are justified owing to the fact that negotiators are in near constant contact and are familiar with one another's underlying preferences. (Arregui 2008) argues that this familiarity makes it difficult for negotiators to hide their ‘true’ preferences and ensure for the most part that positions are close to the alternatives preferred by negotiators.

3 Council Decision (2004/338/EC, Euratom) of 22 March 2004 adopting the Council's rules of procedure (OJ L 106, 15.4.2004, p.22).

4 http://www.consilium.europa.eu/homepage?lang=en.

5 It should be noted that missing positions and saliency data is a feature of the DEU dataset. This missing data is treated as if the relevant actors are indifferent to the issues in question. This is a common assumption made by studies using these data and is appropriate because we are interested in measuring clear situations of conflict between actors with this measure. When position or saliency information is missing for an actor, this actor drops out of the calculation of proposal polarization.

6 Some of the different types of records in the analysis include item notes, reports, outcome of proceedings, proposals, cover notes and other records relating to the legislative process.

Additional information

Biographical note:

James P. Cross is a post-doctoral researcher in the European politics research group at the ETH Zürich, and a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute.