Agenda-Setting in the EU Political System: Linking Intra-Commission and Inter-Institutional Policy-Making

Explanations of EU policy-making almost exclusively focus the inter-institutional process. This perspective disregards that the positions proposed by the Commission are the endpoint of complex intra Commission processes. These processes yield explanatory power which policy is adopted in Europe. This paper analyses the links between intra-Commission and inter-institutional decision making. Do characteristics of internal negotiations, such as the degree of conflict among different Directorates General or the length of internal negotiations, have an effect on the inter-institutional negotiations? Do intra- and inter-institutional conflict evolve around the same issues? Moreover, are positions overruled inside the Commission subject to (early) revisions in an attempt by internal actors to take the amended legislation further to their preferred policy positions? This study addresses these questions by combining insights from a broader project that studied internal position formation of 48 legislative acts from the Prod and Barros I Commission and newly collected data on characteristics of these cases in the inter-institutional process. On this basis it is argued that internal Commission decision-making is at least as important for the political agenda in European politics as is the inter-institutional process.