The entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon on 1 December 2009 ‘marked the end of a long and complicated process of comprehensive treaty revision that had commanded considerable political attention from both national governments and the European institutions (Egenhofer, Kurpas, Piotr Kaczyński and Louise van Schaik , 2011).
De Schoutheete draws a timeline period for his analysis of the expansion and effectiveness of the European institutions from the date of the Single Act in 1986 to the entrance in force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. In this period of time four treaties pass through the history of the European Union and the institutional system have grown and changed the complexity. The decision-making process is considerably and strongly related to the structural development of the institutions. While the European Parliament’s power was growing its roles were enhancing as well from essentially consultative towards a procedure for co-operation and then decision-making. The European Council after Lisbon treaty officially became one of Union’s institutions and gradually becoming “the main source of political initiative and ultimate decision-maker”. The relevance of this institution in the decision-making at the present moment is justified by the adoption of the common currency or the single market.
On the other hand, the Treaty of Lisbon continues the tradition of changing the EU’s institutional set-up without revolutionising it. It has maintained the Union’s distinct sui generis character: the EU will carry on functioning in some policy areas such as the internal market with powers that are more centralised at the EU level (supranational decision-making) and in other policy areas for example the case of security and defence as an international organisation, where states have veto powers and decisions are sometimes legally difficult to enforce intergovernmental decision-making (Egenhofer, Kurpas, Piotr Kaczyński and Louise van Schaik , 2011).
Additionally, another point in the effect of the expansion is the adoption of the concept of the “sub-system” like the Euro Zone or the Schengen are. Regarding the complexity, their own decision- making process has been assented. According to Hagemann and De Clerck-Sachsse (2007) an initial observation considering the great expansion of the institutions, an impressive quantity of legislation has been adopted since 2004 enlargement. The research support the conventional view that the addition of the 10 new member states has not slow down the process of Council policy- making. Based on previous empirical and analytical studies of Golub (1999) there are seven hypotheses about the European Community decision-making an interesting overview upon decision-making. In his H6.: “Most observers would expect enlargement to make it more difficult to reach decisions in the Council. This is because in cases of unanimous voting each new Member State wields a veto, so that potential disagreement and deadlock increases dramatically with the addition of each new voice. In cases of QMV the veto threat is obviously removed, but enlargement might still reduce the ease of decision-making because it decreases the proportion of winning coalitions in the Council. In other words, under QMV, enlargement increases the availability of minority blocking coalitions that want to kill a given proposal more than it increases the availability of majority winning coalitions that want to adopt a given proposal”. In his work he explains that the convergence of member states preference and the formation of ‘relatively limited number of connected coalition’ in the Council as the main factor of the satisfactory functioning of the decision-making after the first enlargement. It is not noticed an increase of the disagreements in the Council meeting, however an increase in the level of opposition did.
The quantity of legislation adopted by the Council has decreased since the enlargement. The study specify in almost thirty months, from December 2001 to May 2004 enlargement, the Council adopted a total of 474 acts, and 139 of them were passed in the very few months before the enlargement. This is suggested because more legislative work should have been done before the date that the new member states could start exercising their legal rights.
When looking in to the area of policy making, there have been striking findings of an important change in the procedure of the Council meeting . Afterwards the enlargement period, May2004- October 2006, it have been noticed a decrease in the amount of legislation acts passed: 328 proposals adopted, 29 of those were for re-adoption to the legislation in consideration to the new state members. It can be observed a reduction of thirty one percent in the adoption rate of legislation in comparison to the pre enlargement period. Still it is difficult to conclude whether the reduction of the amount of adopted legislations is an indicator to a decreased level of efficiency.
However for this question another point of view is suggested from all the interviewed practitioners from the older member states that affirms that the workload has increased for the working group level of the decision-making process. The case of the majority or just blocking minority has become harder because in the negotiation process is need to include more member states, affirms a past president. These factors have produced a change in the negotiation style and atmosphere, therefore the members states must become accustomed to the new dynamic of the decision- making. These types of adjustments help the new members to assert more clearly their positions by the initial period of the membership.
In the Hagemann and Clerck-Sachsse, (2007) research is shown that there is no substantial deadlock in the general policy-making, however there are some indicators that there is a general need for reforms: “Institutional reform will not only be important for the smoother integration of possible new member states, but also for easing the process of decision-making for the current EU structure. The larger drop in adopted legislation in those policy areas where unanimity is needed suggests that the extension of qualified majority voting should be welcomed. And while we do not see double-majority voting as an essential reform in terms of efficiency, it might nevertheless contribute to greater transparency in decision-making”.
De Schoutheete(2011), makes a historical analysis through over the institutional system from the European Economic Community mostly until the Single Act in 1986 and appoints to the importance of making a difference in the nature of the two approaches Community method and the intergovernamental method that lies in the fact that in one instance the decision-making process in entrusted to institutions, where the Commission plays an important but not exclusive role and the other instance is entrusted to governmental representatives. Another difference makes that in the institution a vote may be taken, while the government representatives decided by consensus. He critics the function of the ‘apparently simplicity of the good old days’ and some ‘very well hidden complexities’: “Many ministers always considered issues of legal formality to be merely accessory. They did not always react with the same stringency to the distinction between their intergovernmental meetings and the Council meetings. They considered the demands of Michel Jobert, who wanted them to meet in Copenhagen in the morning wearing their intergovernmental garb and in the Council in Brussels in the afternoon, to be excessive and irksome. They gradually began to agree that they were meeting to make decisions, and that they would leave it to their functionaries to decide in what capacity they were making those decisions. The choice was not always clear. Another point to consider in the enlargement of the Council meeting s and the preparatory meeting that are confirmed by the minutes recorded. The tone of the negotiations is not hold in such familiar tone anymore; a formal tendency to read statements in the procedure of negotiations prevails (Philippe de Schoutheete, 2002). It therefore appears as if the Council records now show an even greater emphasis on the culture of consensus, while at the same time the governments have been able to ensure the recording of their true political positions ( Hagemann and Clerck-Sachsse, 2007).
The Treaty of Lisbon is designed to make the EU more democratic, efficient and transparent. In terms of transparency, the Treaty states explicitly for the first time the division of competences between the Union and the member states. Another very important improvement of the treaty is that strengthens the right of public access to documents. In addition to this, on 9th of November 2005, the ‘European Transparency Initiative’ (ETI) was formally launched. This is the chance for the European Commission to meaningfully improve transparency and ethics in EU policy making, including a debate on both lobbying transparency and the European institutions’ codes of ethics and consultation practices.
The effects of the enlargement of the EU has in my opinion one of the most successful foreign policy initiated since the creation of the European Community taking in to account the change in the negotiation style and the efficiency level with much more democratic and transparent institutions.
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