Black Boxes and Open Secrets—Practical Reality and Symbolic Implications of Seclusion in the Eu’s Law-Making System

Trilogues are an informal institution enabling the three main EU decision making institutions to reach legislative agreement in a secluded setting. In slightly more than a decade, they have become an absolutely pivotal but also increasingly debated part of the EU’s lawmaking process. While some view them as an efficient and legitimate device for making EU democracy work, others consider them as opaque deal-making diluting the democratic character of the European Parliament in a technocratic universe of transgovernmental diplomacy. Drawing on contemporary ethnographic and political science studies, we plunge into the practical and symbolic reality of trilogue seclusion and ask three simple questions: how do boundaries manifest themselves in trilogues? How permeable are these boundaries? And (how) can decision-makers and stakeholders maintain their identity in such a decision-making system? Our analysis draws on original empirical data, collected through in-depth interviews with a broad range of EU decision-makers and stakeholders. It generates paradoxical insights into the phenomenon of trilogues and raises the need for a more structured discussion of its normative implications.

This study is part of an international research project on ‘Democratic Legitimacy in the EU: Inside the Black Boxe of Trilogues’, funded by the Open Research Area (ORA) consortium.