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In Srl ond lia Sce Everprives etd by Amado Bagnasco and Chale F.Sabel, 98-114, Londen: Pieter The Institutional Foundations of Intergovernmentalism and Supranationalism in the European Union George Tsebelis and Geoffrey Garrett We present a unified model of the politics of the European Union (EU). We focus ‘on the effects of the EU's changing treaty base—fzom the founding Rome Treaty (catifed in 1958) to the Single Furopean Act (SEA, 1987), the Maasiicht Treaty on European Union (1993), and the Amsterdam Treaty (1999)—on the relations among. its three supranational institations—the Commission of the European Communities, the European Court of Justice, and the European Parliament—and between these actors and the intergovemmental Council of Ministers. We conceive of these institutions in terms of the roles they perform in the three core functions of the modem state: to legislate and formulate policy (legislative branch), to administer and implement policy (executive branch), and to interpret policy and adjudicate disputes (judicial branch). ‘The Council and the Parliament are predominantly legislative institutions. The Council ditectly represents the national governments of the member states. Council support is necessary for the passage of all EU legislation, Since 1987, the Council has increasingly made decisions under “qualified majority voting” (QMV) rather than under unanimity voting.” The citizens of Europe have directly elected the Parliament since 1979. The Parliament makes decisions by absolute majority at the acer versions ofthis article were presented at Hava Usvesitys he sition Jaap March, Yale Law School and the ECSA conferene in PitsburghSpeval asks to Karen Als, Rober Coote Sion Hs, Simon Hog, Toren Iver, Lisa Marin, to anoayraousreviemers on the etry of TO for many sigh comments. Tsebots woul ike to acknowledge fiancialsopport provided by the Naver Science Fotneation (gant no. SBR 9511288), 1, While oberets note tht Tost Cousll decisions stl seem Yo be made by “comensos iat is, rani. the formal role of lied majorly no doubt sets the dynamics of this consensos buling, Cub 1999. QMV ia vong lem which the ves of member goverment te weg and in whch rootly five-sevenths of thee weighted vase are requiedfur passage, In he caver fien.mesier EU, te following eight are arigned: France, Germany, Tay and te Usted Kingdon ten votes each: Span, eight votes: Beis, Greece, the Neterand, and Portugal. five eves co ‘Sweden and Anna fo vrs: Denma, Flan, and rela te tes ac a Lanenibovte, WO ‘ete Sitch Stes "the eghy-even poss) cence + qealibed ajay Iernational Organization 55,2, Spring 200, 9p. 387-390 {© 2001 by The 10 Foundation an the Massacets Isat of Technology388 International Organization ‘end of ll legislative procedures? The Parliament had no effective influence over legislation until the ratification ofthe SEA in 1987. But with the ratification of the Amsterdam Treaty on May 1999, the Parliament became a coequal with the ‘Couacil in what is effectively a bicameral EU legislature for all policy areas covered by the reformed “codecision” procedure (Amsterdam Treaty. Ar. 189).° Under this new regime. new legislation requires the support of both a qualified majority in the ‘Council and an absolute majority in the Parliament The Courts the EU's judicial branch, ts mandate i 1 interpret the EU's treaty base and secondary legislation passed pursuant to the treaties in the arbitration of conflicts among EU institutions and among these institutions, member states, and citizens. The Court hus been remarkably effective in the past forty years, sucoess- fully “consitotionalizing” the EU's treaty base, claiming, wide povers of judicial review over this would-be constitution, and exercising judicial activism sn the interpretation of secondary legislation, Finally, the Commission fulfils two discrete funetion inthe EU: Is both @ legislator with a monopoly on the drafting of bills and the bureaucracy charged with implementing leislation* Most commentators consider the Commission to have been the prime mover behind the reinvigoration of European integsation inthe mid-1980s, ‘Our central contention is that the balance of power among these fou institutions thas changed considerably since the signing of the Rome Treaty. We analyze these changes in terms of the evolution of the EUs legislative regime and its impact on the discretion of dhe Commission to implement policy and of the Cour to adjudicate policy disputes, The connection between legislation and discretion is staightfor- ‘ward, The more dificult itis for new legislation tobe passed (for example, because of higher voting thresholds or more veto players, the more discretion bureaucracies and counts have to move policy outcomes closer to their own preferences” ‘The history of Buropean integration can be divided into three epocks. First, the Luxembourg compromise period (1958-87) was characterized by legislative grid etnsent comely has 626 embers: Germany has 98; France, Isl, an the Unite ‘ison 67 eats Spin 4 te Netertandn 31: Deghom, Gree, and Pongal 29 coum Smeden 32 ‘wea, 3; Denar sd Finland, 16 etch eland. (5; ae Lancing 6. Thi wot of cure, to pote ether areas of tcteasing Parent adhe, euch a lacking the appointment of pew Cormssone S'The Commision ones nt have EM KSepng power K mst make lepislive proposals when reqs to un so Br the Cian and, since Manse. bythe Parament a vel 5. This sepera! speach t inking he leginlative,exenive sl alicia brances of gover is sctness Ti arpumen canbe found in MeCobbins, Nol ané Weingast 1989, Trelis 1995: Hammond 1006: Hammad and Miller 1087 ad Haro tad Koot 1999s far an we know the point he 0 en dspted wih respect to cour: for comparative cabecson see Cooler ard Ciroary (996, a Azan 1998. Fr peliiaryatepts to apply the framework t egal pis ia the EU. kee Cote he Drent 1998 Reine Fereohn and Get 19; and Altes (908, With resect To bureaus, sore ‘tte teratire wakes te pri ham vce to avoid boresteatiemtonomy leit wl yt Noe ture restive laws eaten to de the cours, or apy ater renictions Se Feejotn and Shipan Tog, oe 19% and MeCbbin, Nell and Wemgast 1987- Of cours, iagrecingleltrs may oF ‘ray bette abe to rte auch Taw to valet bueauerat I te content the EU, stmnitve ‘veri proved by varone"eorelogy” procedures we discus ae. Intergovernmentalism and Supranationalism in the EU 359 Jock in the Council, In this period the Council was an ineffective collective institution, with the system of national vetoes protecting the sovereignty of member states, In turn, the unanimity-voting requirement in the Coun greatly mitigated the legislative power of the Commission (because its agenda-setting power was negli- sible). But the Commission was doubly hamstrung under the Luxembourg eompro- ise because the small volume of legislation produced by the Council gave the Commission scant opportunities to exercise its (potentially extensive) bureaucratic discretion to implement policy afforded by unanimity voting. In contrast, legislative idlock in the Couneil facilitated Court activista because only treaty revisions ‘could rein in the Court, The freedom of the Court to interpret the Rome Treaty was thus the primary force propelling European integration during the Luxembourg, compromise. ‘The second epoch of European integration began when the SEA was ratified, In this period the Council became a more effective legislative institution, atthe cost of national sovereignty—individusl governments that could no longer veto legislation ‘of which they disapproved. The Coutt’s discretion to interpret secondary legisaion was curtailed by the move from unanimity to QMV in the Council (though its discretion in constitutional interpretation was unaffected because treaty revisions require unanimity among member states). The change in Council voting rales also {gave the Commission agenda-seiting power (though this power was shared with the Parliament under the “cooperstion” procedure). Moreover, the proliferation of EU legislation associated with the intemal market program (the "1992" agenda) gave the Commission many mote opportunities to affect outcomes through poticy implementation than was the case under the Luxembourg compromise, Thus the effective removal of national vetoes in the Council rendered the Commission the prime mover behind European integration inthe decade following the ratification of. the SEA—so long as its legislative proposals respected the preferences of the pivotal members of the Council under QMV and the Parliament (under the cooperati procedure) ‘The origins of Europe's third and current epoch lie in the Maastricht Treaty, and these foundations were cemented et Amsterdam. The Parliament is yw a powerful legislator, coequal with the Council under the reformed codecision procedure. In contrast, the Commission’s legislative agenda-setting powers are far more limited than they were in the immediate post-SEA era. But empowering the Parliament in «bicameral legislature has increased the probability of gridlock between it and the Council. Consequently, the discretionary space available to the Commission to ‘implement policy and to the Court to adjudicate disputes has increased. In this current epoch. therefore, all four of the EUs major institutions play important roles that are reminiscent of those of legislatures (the Council and the Parliament), bureaucracies (the Commission), and legal systems (the Court) in national polities with bicameral legislatures (such as Germany), Portions of these epochs may seein familiar to some readers. Court-watchers agree that the Luxembourg compromise represented the halcyon days of legal360 _Inernstional Organization activism in Europe® They have also noted, though mostly in passing, that the Court's influence seemed to wane after the ratification of the SEA.” We offer a simple explanation for this change and make predictions about the role of the Court after the Amsterdam Treaty. Commission-enthusiasts will likely accept our render- ing of the post-SEA period, but we know of no other arguments that explain the politics of the period as clearly as we do, We are also unaware of other analyses of the post-Amsterdam period that are as comprehensive as outs, More generally, we boieve that tow much of the voluminous literature on the day-to-day operations of the contemporary EU couches generalized descriptions of political processes in ‘vague and imprecise theoretical arguments inspired by Ernst Haas's neofunction- lism." In contrast, we draw sharp distinctions both among the influences of the EU’s different instiwtions and across the epochs in the evolution of European integration ‘Moreosct. our analysis has important implications for the politics of institutional choice. We agree with Andrew Moravesik that the EU's changing teaty base has hhad macked impact on the process of European integration? We stress, however, that understanding the consequences of these treaties necessitates first analyzing hhow they will affect the interactions among the EU's major institutions.'° This Position. in turn, requires our assuming that the member governments understand ‘what they ate doing when they sign treaties, The issue of intentionality has been keenly debated. For some analysts, the law of| unintended consequences has been a central fact of treaty revisions!*. Others suggest that governments pay so much attention to treaty revisions that they are the Teast likely aspects of European integration to be subject to this. purported Jaw.""Atthough the member governments have sometimes made mistakes in the ‘tails of their institutional innovations, we show that often these mistakes have subsequently been eradicated, as they have, for example, in the codecision proce- dure. Thus we believe that the institutional interactions we analyze in this article genetally reflect the collective will of the member governments concerning their \esired trajectory for the evolution of the EU. ‘Our analysis is organized as follows. We first outline what we consider the srengths and weaknesses of current research into institutional intersetions among, the diffesent branches of government in the EU, We then offer a general model for lunderstanding the relationships among legislation, policy implementation, and legal ‘adjudication, We then move on to more specific arguments sbout legislative polities in the EU and analyze their effects on the discretion of the Commission and Court 6, Weer 1991 1 Math ad Siaugier 1998, 205, © tas 938, 9. Moraes 1998, {O. Moraes pay ateon to some ofthe det of the EU's institution But only in tenas of aide coamtmenst sntegration tht they represent 4 Santo and Zeman 10, Intergovernmentalism and Supranationalism in the EU 361 ‘We conclude by discussing the implications of our analysis for European integration research in general. Existing Research on Institutional Interactions in the EU ‘Scholarship on institutional interactions in the EU has proliferated in recent years, particularly among those who focus on supranational actors in the Haasian tradition. ‘The most ambitious work in this vein tends to make two Turwdamental claims: ftst, that supranational institutions play a powerful role in the everyday operation of the EU; and. second, that this process is self-reinforcing, invariably creating “more Burope.” Rather than trying to summarize the voluminous literature, we focus on three influential studies. First, Alec Stone Sweet and Wayne Sandholtz analyze the ‘dynamics of what they term “supranational governance” in the EU." Second, Anne-Marie Burley and Walter Matli provide a “neofunctionalist jurisprudence” of European integration."* Finally, Gary Marks, Liesbet Hooghe, and Kermit Blank discuss what they call “mubilevel governance” in the EU.!= Stone Sweet and Sandholiz explicitly seek to distance themselves from classical neofunctionalism. They “problematize the notion ... that integration is the process by which the EC gradually but comprehensively replaces the nation-state in all its functions.”** Nonetheless. the similarities between Stone Sweet and Sandholtz and Emst Heas are apparent when it comes to analyzing the integration dynamic (rather than predicting its endpoint): “We view .., decision-making as embedded in Processes that are provoked and sustained by the expansion of transnational society, the pro-integrative activities of supranational organizations, and the growing density of supranational rules... . . These processes gradually, but inevitably, reduce the ‘capacity of the member states to control outcomes," ‘What isthe process by which this transfer of authority from the nation-state to the BBU takes piace? Here, Stone Sweet and Sandholtz are quite vague. Their argument appears to have two elements. The first is purely functional: “The expansion of lwansnational exchange, and the associated push to substitute supranational for national rules, geneiates pressure on the EC's ofganizations to act." It would be hard to disagree with this proposition. Even Moravesik in his intergovernmentalist accounts contends that the preferences of multinational firms and exporters for larger markets, pan-European regulation, and exchange-rate stability have been prime movers behind European integration siace World War Il." ‘The second facet ‘of Stone Sweet and Sandholz's argument supplements this demand-side logie with 13, Stose Sweet an Sano 1997, 14 Hurley snd Man 1098 55, Mibks, Hoogbe, and Blark 1996, 16. Stone Sweet od Sends 1997, 299, 17. Bo, 300, 18 Bl 299. 12, Moravesie 1998