Early bird or late riser? Analysing the timing of European Parliament involvement during the negotiation of international agreements
(2023) Politicologenetmaal — Location: Leuven (1.June.2023)
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- Authors
Bardou, Marine 
- Abstract
- This paper systematically maps the timing of European Parliament (EP) activities during the negotiation of international agreements. Since the entry into force of the Lisbon treaty, EP consent is required to conclude most international agreements. This represents over 25 agreements a year in various policy areas. The EP is involved through formal and informal means, such as resolutions, and the timing of these EP activities varies considerably, inducing variation in its (potential) impact since the flexibility of the agreement’s substantive content decreases over time. Therefore, mapping timing is essential to identify the EP’s role(s) in the consent procedure. Hence, this paper asks: what is the timing of the EP’s involvement throughout the negotiation processes of international agreements? The paper relies upon an original, comprehensive dataset of all international agreements concluded by the EU since 2009. For each of the 329 agreements, a chronological sequence is compiled, composed of EP activities, situated in negotiation phases by including procedural steps. The sequences of EP involvement are then clustered by similarity utilizing an optimal-matching algorithm. For 70% of negotiations, the EP does not undertake any activity beyond giving its consent. For 23% of the negotiations, the EP gets involved, but only during the phase of conclusion. Only for 7% of the negotiations the EP gets involved through multiple activities during the phases of mandate preparation and negotiation: when it ‘wakes up’ at all, the EP is more of a late riser. Through this systematic, cross-case analysis, the paper provides a comprehensive picture of EP involvement in the negotiation of international agreements. It contextualizes existing case studies which have focused on a handful of agreements.
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Citations
Bardou, M. (2023). Early bird or late riser? Analysing the timing of European Parliament involvement during the negotiation of international agreements. Politicologenetmaal, Leuven. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/100932