I Know What You Did Last Trilogue - National Parliaments, Information Costs, and the Scrutiny of Informal EU Negotiations

Abstract

Trilogues have long been criticised for their informality and lack of transparency. Among the critics are national parliaments who reportedly find it difficult to scrutinise trilogues proceedings and their own governments’ role in them. In this thesis, I analyse the effect of trilogues on opposition MPs in national parliaments from a rational-choice institutionalist perspective, arguing that trilogues substantially increase the costs of accessing information and thereby inhibit scrutiny. However, my case study of the German Bundestag also shows that outsourcing tasks of information accessing and processing through a combination of highly formalised and informal institutions can mitigate the negative effects of trilogues. More broadly, the findings further point to an imbalance in the incentive structure of scrutiny where MPs face low expected benefits from scrutiny as the lack of public salience continues to haunt EU politics. This reduces scrutiny of trilogue proceedings even if the high information costs can be overcome through institutional adaptations.