The many faces of EU committee governance |
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| Authors: | Morten Egeberg Günther Schaefer Jarle Trondal |
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| Institution: | 1. ARENA (Advanced Research on the Europeanisation of the Nation-State) and Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo;2. Public Policy at the European Institute of Public Administration/Maastricht NL;3. Centre for European Studies at Agder University College, Norway |
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| Abstract: | Committees linking national administrations and the EU level play a crucial role at all stages of the EU policy process. The literature tends to portray this group system as a coherent mass, characterised by expert-oriented ‘deliberative supranationalism’, a term developed through studies of comitology (implementation) committees. This article builds on survey data of 218 national officials in 14 member states who have attended EU committee meetings. These groups exhibit important common features: expert knowledge rather than country size plays a pivotal role in the decision making process; across types of committee, participants evoke multiple allegiances and identities. In spite of loyalty to national institutions, there is also a sense of belonging to the committees as such, though with significant variation among types of committee. Council and comitology groups are strongly intergovernmental, while Commission committees seem more multi-faceted. The primary aim here is to give an empirical account, but the main observations are interpreted from an institutional and organisational perspective. |
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