‘They Are No Different, They Are Much the Same…?’ Post-2019 Inter-Institutional Dynamics in the European Union

Abstract

The May 2019 European elections and the follow-up to them have frequently been perceived as representing a departure in terms of the European Union’s inter-institutional dynamics, particularly with regard to such issues as the fragmentation of the centrist two-group bloc in the Parliament, the failure of the Spitzenkandidaten procedure, and the European Commission’s initiative powers. By taking the longer-term view this Chapter shows how apparently radical departures are but the latest milestones in a series of cumulative trends. Inter-institutional dynamics have been changing but these evolutionary processes have been under way for a long time, from the decline of centrist representation consolidated within the two traditional major political families, to the parliamentarisation of the relationship between the European Commission and the European Parliament, and the presidentalisation of, and much heavier reliance on programming in, the European Commission. At the same time, other fundamental and distinctive traits in the institutions’ behaviours have continued: the search for maximum consensus in the European Council and the Council; the search for majorities in the European Parliament; and the search for legitimization in the European Commission. Thus, although the European Union’s inter-institutional dynamics are changing they are still, in some respects, fundamentally the same.

A first version of this chapter was delivered to the AFSP congress, Bordeaux, 3 July 2019. A more condensed version of the chapter was published as, ‘Ils ne sont pas différents, ils sont à peu près les mêmes… ?’ in Revue de l’Union Européenne, N° 637, April 2020, pp. 238–244. A second version of the chapter was presented at a 26 January 2021 online workshop organised by the College of Europe, Bruges, and the Catholic University of Leuven.