The European Commission - Appointment, Preferences and Institutional Relations

Mika Widgrén and Stefan Napel

No 5478, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: The paper analyses the appointment of the European Commission as a strategic game between members of the EU's Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The focal equilibrium results in Commissioners that duplicate policy preferences of national Council representatives. Different internal decision rules still prevent the Commission from being a Council clone in aggregate. Rather, it is predicted that Commission policies are on average more in accord with the aggregate position of the Parliament than the Council. A data set covering 66 dossiers with 162 controversial EU legislative proposals passed between 1999 and 2002 is investigated to test this. In fact, the Council is significantly more conservative than Parliament and Commission; the latter two are significantly closer to each other than Council and Commission.

Keywords: European commission; European integration; Power; Collective choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 D71 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-pbe
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Related works:
Journal Article: The European Commission–Appointment, preferences, and institutional relations (2008)
Working Paper: The European Commission – Appointment, Preferences, and Institutional Relations (2007)
Working Paper: The European Commission - Appointment, Preferences and Institutional Relations (2006)
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