Joint bodies in the European Union's international agreements: Delegating powers to the European Commission in EU external relations
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165211027397 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Joint bodies in the European
Union’s international
agreements: Delegating
powers to the European
Commission in EU external
relations
Markus Gastinger
Department of Political Science, University of Salzburg, Austria
Andreas Dür
Department of Political Science, University of Salzburg, Austria
Abstract
In many international agreements, the European Union sets up joint bodies such
as ‘association councils’or ‘joint committees’. These institutions bring together
European Union and third-country officials for agreement implementation. To date,
we know surprisingly little about how much discretion the European Commission
enjoys in them. Drawing on a principal–agent framework, we hypothesise that the
complexity of agreements, the voting rule, conflict within the Council, and agency
losses can explain Commission discretion in these institutions. Drawing on an original
dataset covering nearly 300 such joint bodies set up by the European Union since
1992, we find robust empirical support for all expectations except for the agency
loss thesis. Our findings suggest that the European Commission is the primary
actor in the implementation of many of the European Union’s international agree-
ments, allowing it to influence EU external relations beyond what is currently
acknowledged in the literature.
Keywords
Agreement implementation, European Commission discretion, EU external relations,
joint bodies, principal–agent model
Corresponding author:
Markus Gastinger, Department of Political Science, University of Salzburg, Rudolfskai 42,
5020 Salzburg, Austria.
Email: Markus.Gastinger@sbg.ac.at
Article
European Union Politics
2021, Vol. 22(4) 611–630
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165211027397
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
Introduction
The European Union (EU) is one of the most prolific authors of international agreements
in the world. In the area of trade, for example, the EU has concluded more agreements
than any other state or regional organisation (Dür et al., 2014: 357). In many respects,
international agreements only constitute a ‘starting point’(Cooley and Spruyt, 2009: 9)
and leave it to states to flesh them out through continued government-to-government
interactions after entry into force. Just as important as the conclusion of agreements,
therefore, is a stable institutional framework for their successful implementation. This
function is provided by what we term ‘joint bodies’(JBs) in this article. Whoever in
the EU holds the keys to these bodies can steer implementation and shape EU external
relations for years to come.
Prominent examples of these institutions include association councils or joint commit-
tees. These bodies bring together representatives from the EU and the other agreement
signatories for continued negotiations over agreement implementation. In the EU, it is
often the European Commission (henceforth ‘Commission’) that carries out vital func-
tions in JBs. Which exact role the Commission plays, however, varies across agreements.
In the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, for
example, the Council of the European Union (‘Council’) gave the Commission substan-
tial leeway. The Commission can, for example, define the EU position for negotiations
with Canada on which geographical indications to include in the future. Moreover, in
the CETA joint committee, where these negotiations with Canada take place, the EU
is represented by the Commissioner for Trade. Germany’s constitutional court criticised
that member states were not even assured a seat at the table, which risked undermining
their influence (German Federal Constitutional Court, 2016: paragraph 62). However,
the German government supported extensive powers for the Commission noting that
such arrangements were ‘common’in EU trade agreements (German Federal
Constitutional Court, 2016: paragraph 29).
The Commission does not always enjoy such a high level of discretion. In the ‘step-
ping stone’Economic Partnership Agreement with Ghana, concluded within months of
CETA, the Council ensured that the joint committee includes representatives of the
Commission and the Council. In the Euro-Mediterranean Agreements with Israel,
Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia signed between 1995 and 1997, member states empowered
the Council Presidency to represent the EU in the joint institutions rather than the
Commission. When concluding an agreement with the Seychelles in 2014 on access
for fishing vessels to Mayotte, member states even pinned a 400-word annex on the
Commission detailing its ‘scope of the empowerment’in the joint committee (Council,
2015). What explains this variation in discretion across JBs that the Council gives the
Commission?
In this article, we formulate a principal–agent argument to explain Commission discre-
tion in these bodies, understood as the leeway that the Commission is formally granted
(which may differ from the autonomy the Commission exerts in practice). Our theoretical
framework, and subsequent empirical findings, shows that the same factors often
expected to explain delegation in internal (domestic) legislation are also apt to explain
612 European Union Politics 22(4)
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