Time is of the essence: Explaining the duration of European Union lawmaking under the co-decision procedure
| Author | Adam Kirpsza |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211036423 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Original Research Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211036423
International Political Science Review
2022, Vol. 43(4) 564 –579
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/01925121211036423
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Time is of the essence: Explaining
the duration of European Union
lawmaking under the co-decision
procedure
Adam Kirpsza
Jagiellonian University, Poland
Abstract
The article explores factors affecting the duration of the co-decision procedure (currently the ordinary
legislative procedure), the main procedure for adopting legislation in the European Union. Drawing from
rational choice institutionalism, it expects the speed of co-decision to be determined by three attributes:
the impatience of legislators, issue linkage and the characteristics of Council and European Parliament
negotiators (relais actors). The hypotheses are tested using survival analysis on a dataset of 599 controversial
legislative acts submitted and enacted under co-decision between 1999 and 2009. The results show that
co-decision proposals are decided faster when they are urgent, negotiated prior to the European Parliament
elections and concluded through single proposal logrolls. By contrast, multi-proposal packages and the
ideological distance between relais actors prolong decision-making. Overall, the article contributes to the
literature by showing that the impatience of legislators, package deals and the properties of negotiators are
relevant drivers of co-decision duration.
Keywords
European Union, EU lawmaking, legislative duration, ordinary legislative procedure, co-decision procedure
Introduction
For decades, political scientists have racked their brains, trying to explain the duration of lawmak-
ing in political systems. The reason is that the study of decision-making speed holds practical and
normative importance. Practically, it helps to assess and improve the legislative efficiency of polit-
ical systems. By identifying factors expediting or prolonging lawmaking, duration studies offer
constitutional, institutional and political solutions that would avert gridlock and accelerate the
adoption of legislation. Likewise, they help to enhance the ability of political systems to quickly
Corresponding author:
Adam Kirpsza, Institute of Political Science and International Relations, Jagiellonian University, ul. Władysława Reymonta
4, Krakow 30-059, Poland.
Email: adam.kirpsza@uj.edu.pl
1036423IPS0010.1177/01925121211036423International Political Science ReviewKirpsza
research-article2021
Original Research Article
Kirpsza 565
react to urgent circumstances, an issue of crucial relevance given that policy problems generally
require rapid legislative responses. Normatively, duration studies allow to unveil the democratic
implications of fast or lengthy decision-making. Specifically, they provide answers to the question
of how political and institutional drivers of duration influence the input and output legitimacy of
lawmaking.
This article contributes to this scholarship by exploring legislative duration in a unique political
system – the European Union (EU). Decision-making speed has become an important area of EU
studies since 1990s. Previous research found a variety of factors affecting the duration of EU law-
making. First, it is correlated with the size of the winset1 (Drüner et al., 2018) as well as with the
preference heterogeneity within the Council (Hertz and Leuffen, 2011; König, 2007) and between
EU institutions: the European Parliament (EP), the Council and the European Commission (Klüver
and Sagarzazu, 2013). Second, duration is attributable to procedural and institutional factors.
Directives take longer to be adopted than regulations and decisions (Schulz and Konig, 2000),
while qualified majority voting in the Council expedites decision-making (Golub, 1999, 2007;
Hertz and Leuffen, 2011). Other studies found the prolonging effect of the EP involvement on
duration (Golub, 1999, 2007; Klüver and Sagarzazu, 2013). Hertz and Leuffen (2011) showed that
EU enlargements slowed down decision-making, while Toshkov (2017) questioned this finding.
Van Gruisen (2019) demonstrated that the trio presidency format expedites decision-making. By
contrast, consultations with external stakeholders prolong negotiations (Rasmussen and Toshkov,
2013). Third, several studies found the EU institutions’ workload to increase duration (Golub,
2007; Klüver and Sagarzazu, 2013). However, Hurka and Haag (2020) identified the opposite
relationship in the post-Lisbon period. Fourth, timing of legislation is a relevant predictor as deci-
sion-making is faster towards the end of a Council Presidency (Klüver and Sagarzazu, 2013). Fifth,
earlier studies identified the role of policy content as complex and new acts take significantly
longer to conclude (Hurka and Haag, 2020).
Yet two gaps exist in this literature. First, there is a shortage of studies explaining solely the
speed of co-decision (currently the ordinary legislative procedure), the main procedure for adopt-
ing EU legislation. So far, scholars have scrutinized the overall length of all legislative procedures
by modeling the passage of all proposals and just including covariates for different procedures
without disaggregating them into separate models. In doing this, they have assumed that the same
factors are relevant for each procedure and affect their duration in a similar way. However, these
studies neglect the fact that co-decision differs significantly from other procedures. As a result, its
duration may depend on distinct factors.
Second, the existing literature has disregarded three factors with a potential impact on duration:
the impatience of legislators, issue linkage and the characteristics of negotiators. Specifically,
scholars have not investigated how the proposal’s urgency and the anticipation of future events
affect decision-making speed. This is a relevant issue related to the responsiveness of EU institu-
tions to pressing situations since their ineptness to enact legislation within a specific timeframe
may produce high costs for member states. The neglect of issue linkage is also surprising given that
package deals have become a visible feature of EU lawmaking (Kardasheva, 2013). Finally, sev-
eral studies have emphasized that the informalization of co-decision – that is, a tendency to negoti-
ate proposals in trilogues2 (Laloux, 2020) – has empowered the EU institutions’ key negotiators
(so-called relais actors), namely the EP rapporteur and the Council Presidency, in shaping EU
lawmaking (Farrell and Héritier, 2004). Hence, there are grounds to expect that their properties
affect duration.
This article seeks to fill these lacunae. Its purpose is to explain how the impatience of legisla-
tors, issue linkage and the characteristics of relais actors affect co-decision duration. Drawing
from rational choice institutionalism, I delineated five hypotheses expecting the speed of
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