Negotiations and Coalition Formation in the European Community

INSTITUTIONAL REFORM IS ON THE AGENDA OF THE EUROPEAN Communities again, perhaps more seriously than for a decade. The European Parliament's Draft Treaty on European Union and the Dooge Report provided a focus for assessing possible changes to the institutional ground rules and constitutional framework of EC negotiations. A central strand in the debate has been the concern of many practitioners to make the negotiating process more productive and effective, particularly given the prospect that enlargement to twelve wil make the EC more heterogeneous and less manageable. Aside from the constitutionalists, whose arguments for reform are essentially political, the pragmatists can be divided between proponents of better practice and the advocates of some Treaty amendments as necessary means to their end. This article seeks to shed some light on the character of the EC negotiating process in the hope of aiding judgments about the relevance of institutional rules to negotiating outputs.