Against the Odds: Overcoming Gridlock in EU Decision-Making

How can the European Union adopt legislation in the face of profound ideological disagreement? This paper contributes to a debate that points to an established culture of compromise and accommodation on the one hand, and to a joint decision-trap and increasing political conflict on the other hand. Our data cover co-decision files concluded between 1999 and 2014, that either amended or replaced existing EU legislation. For these files, we can approximate the status quo ante, by estimating legislators’ policy positions on the left-right dimension when they adopted the original legislation. Our analysis shows that a significant share of the legislation passed in EP5, EP6 and EP7 should have been defeated by the status quo when the legislation was proposed and/or adopted; we call such legislation implausible. In line with our theoretical argument, we demonstrate that legislators’ shared support for continued EU-level cooperation facilitates implausible legislation, whereas outcomes against the odds of ideological gridlock become less likely under conditions of Eurosceptic contestation. Furthermore, we test whether file- and context-level properties, such as opportunities for issue-linkage, collective impatience, and an outlier Council Presidency can explain why the EU’s legislative process is less gridlocked than we might expect.