EU Conciliation Committee: Council 56 versus Parliament 6

This Paper analyses bargaining between the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of Ministers (CM) in the Conciliation Committee with the aim of evaluating both institutions' power in the European Union's codecision procedure. In contrast to other studies, which use power indices or simple spatial-voting models, both institutions are assumed to act strategically and differences in their internal decision mechanisms are taken into account. Although the CM and the EP have a seemingly symmetric position in the Conciliation Committee, the analysis highlights that the CM is strongly favoured in terms of its average influence on legislation. EU enlargement under the rules of the Treaty of Nice renders the EP almost irrelevant, while the constitutional proposal put forward by the European Convention can lead to a Pareto-improvement.