Equipped for Politics? the European Parliament and Trilogues

In the 7^th term of the European Parliament almost 90% of all legislative files under co-decision were adopted as first-reading agreements, resulting from inter-institutional trilogue negotiations.  The EU institutions have developed a set of internal arrangements for oversight of these.  In the European Parliament, some of these have emerged from central co-ordination, and some from the practice of individual committees via the secretariat and from members.  These arrangements have helped to institutionalise the political development of the EP by securing its autonomy, but an open question concerns their durability from one term to another.  Whilst secretariat and central units help to secure autonomy and continuity, the extent to which members play a political role viz. information supply from member states and outside interests to influence the course of trilogue negotiations is unknown.  We develop a research strategy to identify these information flows, and present some preliminary findings from an early stage of the research project.