Factors Behind Legislative Duration in the European Union

Abstract

This article investigates the impact of various institutional factors on the duration of legislative process negotiations in the European Union. The empirical data consists of EU secondary law directives adopted in 1990-2019 (1124 directives). We use the methodology of survival analysis (Cox model). We detected that after 2004 the rules of voting in the Council (unanimity or qualified majority) do not affect the duration of the legislative process; this conclusion changes the traditional vision of the functioning of the Council. We prove that of all the EU enlargements, only that of 1995 has influenced the legislative process and slowed it down. Other EU enlargements, including one in 2004 when 10 CEE countries joined the EU, did not show a significant impact. We demonstrate that of all basic treaty reforms that have taken place since 1990 only the Amsterdam Treaty has accelerated the decision-making process. In addition, we conclude that the Interinstitutional Agreement of 2007 between the Council and the European Parliament had a stronger impact on the legislative process than most treaty reforms. It favoured the acceleration of decision-making by consolidating cooperative practices between EU institutions based on trilogues. Besides, the study confirms some previous conclusions tested on the new dataset: more active involvement of the European Parliament in the legislative process (ordinary legislative procedure), the novelty and complexity of the act slow down the decision-making process.