UACES Workshop

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Committee Governance in an Enlarged European Union

Organiser: Uwe Puetter, Central European University

Date: 6 May 2006

Venue: Budapest, Hungary

This workshop wants to establish in how far the recent substantial enlargement of the EU presents a particular challenge to the functioning of the existing system of EU committee governance. The latest changes seem to affect core assumptions of prevailing theoretical accounts on comitology - no matter whether they have rationalist or constructivist roots.

Two main areas are identified:
1) Does the increase in membership affect assumptions on patterns of interaction processes - be it in strategic or deliberative terms.
2) Are the new member states able to benefit in the same way from the system of committee governance as the old members?

This workshop will bring together academics and senior policy-makers. In particular, it will be a venue for researchers to meet practioners and explore the territory for new innovative research on the evolution of decision-making institutions in a larger Europe. Thus, the workshop will lay the basis for a future network for empirical and theoretical research.

Workshop Report

Co-sponsored by UACES, the Central European University’s Center for Policy Studies and Center for EU Enlargement Studies this one-day workshop brought together academics and practitioners from across Europe in Budapest. The event focussed on the activities of EU expert committees after the 2004 enlargement. The committees play a vital role in the preparation of final decision-making within the Council and the Commission. They are usually composed of senior officials from the European Commission and national ministries. Besides the task of preparing new legislation committees are crucial to processes of information exchange, peer review and the comparative assessment of country specific policy responses. The significant increase in membership in the wake of enlargement, however, puts the functioning of established working methods and practices at risk. Moreover, administrations in the new member states face a number of challenges related to their own integration into the EU’s system of committee governance. The workshop was intended to respond to a gap in European integration research on the adjustment of committees and their working methods to the changing environment of a Union with 25 or more member states. The workshop was organised around a mix of presentations by academics working the field and senior practitioners who reported on first experiences with the functioning of committees after the 2004 enlargement.

In the academic keynote address Thomas Christiansen from the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht emphasised that research efforts in the area of committee governance have yet failed to come to terms with the functioning of committees in the enlarged Union. He highlighted the complexity of this particular field of EU governance. The sheer number and the different types of committees make it difficult to identify clear patterns of decision-making and working methods, and contribute to a lack of transparency. This makes it difficult to identify a list of common features and/or problems related to the work of committees in a changing environment. One common theme, however, seems to be the role of expert advise in the decision-making process. Nevertheless, the role of individual committee for the actual decision-making process at the political level varies considerably across policy areas.

The practitioner keynote address was provided by the former Secretary of the EU’s Economic and Financial Committee (EFC) and Economic Policy Committee (EPC), Günter Grosche. He emphasised the importance of face-to-face dialogue for the effective functioning of the two committees in the area of economic policy coordination. The increase in the number of participants in the wake of enlargement, thus, constitutes a serious problem to which no appropriate solution has been found yet. He emphasised that already with the increase in the number of EU member states to 15 established working practices became strained. In preparation of the 2004 enlargement the EFC increased the number of meetings during which only one senior representative per country attends. This helped to compensate for the increase in membership. However, the success of committee proceedings largely depends also on the discipline of individual participants to keep with the speaking time. Günter Grosche stressed that besides this the selection of country representatives plays a crucial role in determining the success or failure of committee work. Representatives need to come from the most senior ranks in the administration so that they are able to speak for their ministers. At the same time these individuals need to have enough attention for technical details. He also considered the choice of the language regime as a crucial factor and pleaded for accepting English as the only working language in committee meetings. A view echoed by several other practitioners during the workshop.

A practitioner round table composed of current members of different committees dealing with socio-economic policies discussed first experiences made shortly before and after the 2004 enlargement. Oldrich Dedek from the Czech Ministry of Finance in Prague - who is a delegate of his country in the EPC - emphasised that full participation in EU committee governance implies a tremendous administrative challenge for administrations in transition countries. Most importantly, the selection of competent representatives and the prioritisation of resources cause difficulties. Dedek underlined that the actual committee meetings have not yet shown a particular difference in the behaviour of the new and old member states. Rather the size of individual member states determines their ability to set policies in the committees. Dedek attributed this mostly to the greater administrative capacity of the bigger member states.

For Krystof Kaczmarek, Polish representative in the Employment Committee (EMCO), the size of his committee was the main factor hindering an effective policy dialogue in EMCO. Joint meetings with other committees bring the discussion to standstill. Kaczmarek warned that if discussions were perceived to be ineffective and uninteresting delegates would give even less priority to the committee work, thus making it more difficult to use these forums for policy coordination. He supported the view that many new member states were lacking the administrative resources to respond effectively to the challenges of committee governance. Besides lacking competence and training the frequent change of governments poses another big problem.

László G. Tóth, Hungarian alternate delegate for the EFC spoke of ’hidden ideas’ which often govern proceedings within committees. As a new member it was often difficult for him to identify these informal rules after having been granted formal membership status. He saw Hungary relatively well prepared for sending experts to the relevant EU committees. Again, he rejected the view that enlargement had provoked the emergence of dividing lines between old and new member states. On the contrary, coalitions varied according to policy preferences and cut across the groups of old and new member states.

The former Hungarian Ambassodor to the EU and commissioner Peter Balázs highlighted the logistical challenge his country’s administration had to face when preparing for full participation in the Union’s committee system. He identified that close inter-ministerial coordination at home and a core team of EU experts had been crucial to prepare the administration for accession. Balázs also stressed that the EU did not provide any guidance on how to adjust the domestic division of competencies between the different ministries in the context of joining the EU’s collective decision-making procedures. This was noted with some surprise in Budapest. The former EU commissioner sees the misfit between the EU level decision-making structures and the domestic structures of competence division as a key obstacle for the more effective use of common resources such as the committees.

László Vajda from the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the EU Coordination Department in Budapest outlined how Hungary is currently preparing its administration for the work in the EU institutions and committees. The government provides regular training for delegates and ministerial staff. In addition a coordination committee convenes on a weekly basis in order to fine tune the activities in the different committees and the question of which ministry is responsible. He considered Hungary of being relatively successful in preparing for participation in committee governance as key challenges were identified early on. Notably the necessary human resources had been developed. Nevertheless, Vajda observes a certain ‘brain drain’ to Brussels as people leave the national administration for well-paid jobs in the EU institutions.

Finally, several presentations on new research projects on committee governance after enlargement provided interesting insides. Most importantly, speakers agreed that enlargement has not led to the often feared blockage of decision-making procedures. The main factor here is the practice that committee decision-making resorts to voting only in exceptional circumstances. Of much greater concern to committee members are the growing difficulties in having truly interactive discussions. For example, Jakob Lempp from Technische Universität Dresden, Germany showed in his contribution on the Committee of Permanent Representatives and working groups in the Council that there is an increasing tendency to form informal coalitions of like-minded delegates. So-called lead speakers then speak for these country groups during discussion over policy in the actual meetings in order to accommodate to the greater time pressure under which members operate. In addition, he observed a new preference for a greater formalisation of meetings and stricter agenda management. Jakob Lempp argued that these developments benefit supranational actors in comparison to individual member states.

Ana E. Juncos and Karolina Pomorska from Loughborough University looked at the impact of enlargement on the Common Foreign and Security Policy working groups of the Council. The confirmed the growing importance of informal norms and practices which govern the work of committees. While these informal norms sometimes offer solutions for dealing with the fact that committees and working groups have become bigger, these norms are also difficult to grasp for newcomers. Juncos and Pomorska therefore concluded that many of the new delegates still need to learn how the system works. At the same time they observe an uneven impact of the new member states on policy formation. So far, the newcomers are mainly active in the work directly related to the CEE region.

Focussing on another policy area Anna Horvath from the Central European University analysed the Social Protection Committee. She agreed with concerns raised by many practitioners participating in the workshop that the frequent change of individual delegates from the new member states presents an obstacle to the effective work of the committee. She rejected the idea that enlargement has led to divide over social policy between the old and new member states. However, in some areas enlargement has changed the relative seize of already existing camps or coalitions in the committee. For example, enlargement has brought about a majority for the group of countries backing the “employment before social protection” formula when it comes to reviewing policy options in the committee.

Contact: Uwe Puetter (puetteru@ceu.hu)

Website: http://cps.ceu.hu/committee_governance_workshop.php