IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/erp/eiopxx/p0070.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The "Legislative Backbone" keeping the Institution upright? The Role of European Parliament Committees in the EU Policy-Making Process

Author

Listed:
  • Neuhold, Christine

Abstract

Over the past five decades the European Parliament (EP) has moved from being a largely consultative assembly to being a genuine co-legislature. The growth in the EPs powers was accompanied by a revaluation of its Standing Committees. It is in these committees, the legislative backbone of the EP, that scrutiny of European Union (EU) legislation takes place. As in the US Congress the real work of the Parliament is done in its committees. They have become a key element in the EU policy-making process and make vital contributions to the shaping of legislation. Although these committees play such a major role in the EP, they have rarely been the subject of empirical inquiries. This paper, which is part of a wider project studying the role of committees, intends to fill this gap. In an examination of how legislative acts have been processed by such committees on the basis of interviews and documentary analysis, this paper focuses on the following main questions: 1. How do EP committees operate? 2. How do they interact with other institutions within the EU system of governance? 3. How do they affect the "link" to the EU citizen? From an analytical perspective answers to these questions are important as they help us to understand some characteristics of the EU decision-making process. From a normative perspective our research also tries to answer the question of whether EP committees help increase the EPs accountability to EU citizens.

Suggested Citation

  • Neuhold, Christine, 2001. "The "Legislative Backbone" keeping the Institution upright? The Role of European Parliament Committees in the EU Policy-Making Process," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 5, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:erp:eiopxx:p0070
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2001-010a.htm
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2001-010.htm
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://eiop.or.at/eiop/pdf/2001-010.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Juliet Lodge, 1994. "Transparency and Democratic Legitimacy," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 330-342, September.
    2. Juliet Lodge, 1994. "Transparency and Democratic Legitimacy," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 343-368, September.
    3. Michael Shackleton, 1998. "The European Parliament’s New Committees of Inquiry: Tiger or Paper Tiger?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(1), pages 115-130, March.
    4. Nentwich, Michael & Falkner, Gerda, 1997. "The Treaty of Amsterdam: Towards a New Institutional Balance," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 1, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Léa Roger & Gary S. Schaal, 2013. "The Quality of Deliberation in Two Committees of the European Parliament: The Neglected Influence of the Situational Context and the Policymaking Stage," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 1(2), pages 151-169.
    2. Steffen Hurka, 2013. "Changing the output: The logic of amendment success in the European Parliament’s ENVI Committee," European Union Politics, , vol. 14(2), pages 273-296, June.
    3. Nikoleta Yordanova, 2009. "The Rationale behind Committee Assignment in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 10(2), pages 253-280, June.
    4. Imre Fertő & László Á Kóczy & Attila Kovács & Balázs R Sziklai, 0. "The power ranking of the members of the Agricultural Committee of the European Parliament," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Foundation for the European Review of Agricultural Economics, vol. 47(5), pages 1897-1919.
    5. Lukas Obholzer & Steffen Hurka & Michael Kaeding, 2019. "Party group coordinators and rapporteurs: Discretion and agency loss along the European Parliament’s chains of delegation," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(2), pages 239-260, June.
    6. Thomas Jensen & Thomas Winzen, 2012. "Legislative negotiations in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 13(1), pages 118-149, March.
    7. G. Lappas & A. Triantafillidou & P. Yannas, 2019. "Members of European Parliament (MEPs) on Social Media: Understanding the Underlying Mechanisms of Social Media Adoption and Popularity," The Review of Socionetwork Strategies, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 55-77, June.
    8. Vanhoonacker, Sophie & Dijkstra, Hylke & Maurer Heidi, 2010. "Understanding the Role of Bureaucracy in the European Security and Defence Policy: The State of the Art," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 14, August.
    9. Bouwen, Pieter, 2002. "A comparative study of business lobbying in the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Council of Ministers," MPIfG Discussion Paper 02/7, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    10. Maja Kluger Rasmussen, 2015. "The Battle for Influence: The Politics of Business Lobbying in the European Parliament," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 365-382, March.
    11. Nikoleta Yordanova, 2011. "The European Parliament: In need of a theory," European Union Politics, , vol. 12(4), pages 597-617, December.
    12. Kovacs, A. & Ferto, I. & Koczy, L. & Sziklai, B. & Nas, A.A., 2018. "Who has the critical vote? Power ranking of MEPs in the Agricultural Committee of the European Parliament," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277231, International Association of Agricultural Economists.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Asadu Ikechukwu, Ph.D & Chukwujekwu Charles Onwuka Ph.D, 2021. "Transparency and Accountability in Government: The Nigerian Experience," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 5(08), pages 16-29, August.
    2. Mansbridge, Jane, 2008. "A "Selection Model" of Political Representation," Working Paper Series rwp08-010, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    3. Liliana Hawrysz & Jolanta Maj, 2017. "Identification of Stakeholders of Public Interest Organisations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-13, September.
    4. Geeyoung Hong, 2015. "Explaining vote switching to niche parties in the 2009 European Parliament elections," European Union Politics, , vol. 16(4), pages 514-535, December.
    5. Christina H. Drew & Timothy L. Nyerges & Thomas M. Leschine, 2004. "Promoting Transparency of Long‐Term Environmental Decisions: The Hanford Decision Mapping System Pilot Project," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(6), pages 1641-1664, December.
    6. Štěpán Strnad, 2013. "Crisis of the European Union Legitimacy - No European Demos in Sight [Krize legitimity Evropské unie - evropský démos v nedohledu]," Současná Evropa, Prague University of Economics and Business, vol. 2013(1), pages 123-140.
    7. Wimmel, Andreas, 2005. "Transnationale Diskurse in der europäischen Medienöffentlichkeit: Die Debatte zum EU-Beitritt der Türkei," TranState Working Papers 29, University of Bremen, Collaborative Research Center 597: Transformations of the State.
    8. Dionyssis G. Dimitrakopoulos, 2005. "Norms, Interests and Institutional Change," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 53(4), pages 676-693, December.
    9. Adrian Kay, 2003. "Evaluating Devolution in Wales," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 51(1), pages 51-66, March.
    10. Michael Kaeding, 2004. "Rapporteurship Allocation in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 5(3), pages 353-371, September.
    11. Hix, Simon, 1997. "Executive Selection in the European Union: Does the Commission President Investiture Procedure Reduce the Democratic Deficit?," European Integration online Papers (EIoP), European Community Studies Association Austria (ECSA-A), vol. 1, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:erp:eiopxx:p0070. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Editorial Assistant (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecsaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.