5 - The EU Presidency as broker: constructing intergovernmental bargains

Summary

In the previous chapter, I showed how the function of agenda management offers opportunities for Presidencies to shape the EU's policy agenda. In this chapter, I turn to the second of the Presidency's principal functions in EU cooperation: brokerage. My central argument is that the Presidency's brokerage resources permit the government at the helm to construct and shape agreements that otherwise may not have come about. The Presidency's influence over these negotiated outcomes is two-dimensional. By collecting private information on state preferences and structuring negotiations in ways that encourage convergence, Presidencies can unveil the underlying zone of agreement and engineer viable compromises. Presidency brokerage helps to explain why negotiation failure is a reasonably rare phenomenon in the EU, despite a tendency among governments to be secretive about their preferences and to adopt tactical negotiating positions that reduce the zone of agreement. At the same time, Presidencies are tempted to use their informational and procedural power resources for private gain. Typically, they exploit the position as broker to favor the outcomes they desire. If the zone of agreement permits a number of efficient outcomes with varying distributional consequences, Presidencies promote the agreement closest to their own preferences.

The argument in this chapter challenges the dominant understanding of Presidency brokerage in existing research. Typically, this literature asserts that the responsibility as broker carries adverse consequences for the Presidency government's capacity to secure national interests.