The politics of trilogue negotiations : analyzing the relationship between institutions and their representatives in EU legislative policy-making

The adoption of EU legislation requires that the European Parliament (EP) and the Council agree on an identical text, which means that they have to reconcile their respective positions. Nowadays, the negotiations of a common text mostly take place in trilogues, secluded meetings in which representatives of the legislative institutions negotiate an informal compromise that requires a formal adoption by the co-legislators afterwards. In order to reach a compromise, trilogue negotiators have to make concessions, thus deviating from the positions of their institutions. However, they cannot make too many concessions either, otherwise their institutions will refuse their compromises. Against this backdrop, this PhD aims at explaining the concessions made by negotiators in trilogues. I answer this question through a mixed-method research design in which quantitative and qualitative research strands are independently conducted. Theoretically, the principal-agent model provided the framework for understanding the relationship between the co-legislators (as principals) and their representatives in trilogues (as agents). As a main conclusion, this research shows that while agents in trilogues are at the centre of negotiations, the concessions are not dictated by their preferences. On the contrary, both agents are primarily attentive to finding compromises with which both principals can agree. Moreover, the agents seem to develop little new content themselves in trilogues, but mainly make concessions by exchanging between the positions of their principals.