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Adapting to Enlargement: The Role of Formal and Informal Processes of Institutional Adjustment in EU Committee Governance

The wisdom that substantial European Union (EU) enlargement was likely to have serious repercussions on the way the Union’s core decision-making institutions and procedures function has been spread constantly both in political debate and scholarly research ever since the EU started to pursue this goal in earnest. Most prominently, this concern has been manifest in all attempts on treaty reform following the Maastricht Treaty. Institutional options such as the introduction of rotating membership within the Commission and other supranational bodies such as the European Central Bank (ECB) have been discussed as much as the further supranationalization of the Union through extending qualified majority voting and the competences of the Commission. As of today real progress in many of these areas is still pending. The failed ratification of the Constitutional Treaty presented a major set-back in this regard. The attempt to introduce some of these reforms through the so-called Lisbon Treaty has yet to be concluded. But perhaps most importantly, it has to be noted that the EU nevertheless embarked on its most substantial ever enlargement in 2004 without many of these intended reforms being implemented or even finally agreed upon. This special issue draws attention to the implications enlargement does have for one specific layer of EU decision-making — the one of committee governance. Committees in this regard are understood as expert committees working under the umbrella of and in tune with the decision-making in the