The Commission’s Agenda: an analysis of changing policy attention of the European Commission from 1995 - 2012 N.W.M. Derks Master Thesis European Studies UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE EXAMINATION COMMITTEE Kostas Gemenis Minna van Gerven-Haanpää 21/08/2012 Abstract This thesis is concerned with the changes in the agenda of the European Commission. Using a newly created coding scheme, inspired by the Policy Agendas Project combined with lists of Commission portfolios and Directorates-General, natural sentences of all work programmes from 1995until 2012 are coded. This data is used to track changes in policy attention during the period from 1995-2012. A detailed description is given of the changes found in four specific policy areas: institutional operations; justice and home affairs; economic and financial policy; and social policy. For several of these policy areas, statistically significant correlations are found between changes in the level of attention for those policy areas and shifting political ideology of the Commission and the largest party in the European Parliament. Furthermore, although hard evidence for causal relationships between certain events, such as an economic crisis, and changing policy attention cannot be found due to the used methodology, a first step towards finding which events play a role in the causal processes that cause changes in the agenda can still be made. To my family: for their endless support of, and patience with, me in my long journey through my studies. To Jennifer: your presence and your faith in me made it possible for me to continue with my work even when I felt I would never reach this point. Thank you! I've had a little bit too much to think tonight But it's cool, I’ll be alright, just make sure that I keep travellin’ ~Atmosphere – In My Continental Acknowledgements I would like to thank all the people that helped me in the process of writing and finalizing this thesis. First of all, my thanks go out to Kostas Gemenis and Minna van Gerven, who gave me the opportunity to write this thesis as a continuation of my bachelor thesis and who have helped me in designing the research and writing this final version of my thesis in more ways than can be described here. Most of all, I would like to thank you for awakening my interest in academic research. Secondly, I would like to thank Jeroen Doetjes, who made it possible to combine the final years of my studies with the work necessary to earn enough money to keep myself afloat. And last, but most definitely not least, I would like to thank Jennifer, without whom I probably would not have made it through this entire process. Thank you for your patience, your encouragement, and your help in the creation and finalisation of this thesis. Table of contents List of Figures .................................................................................................................................................. 2 List of Tables ................................................................................................................................................... 2 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................... 3 2 Theoretical background and framework ................................................................................................ 5 2.1 Agenda setting within the institutional framework of the European Union ...................................... 5 2.1.1 Party politics in the European Commission? ............................................................................ 8 2.1.2 Policy priorities and position of political parties ...................................................................... 9 2.1.3 Political events influencing the Commission’s agenda ............................................................ 9 2.2 Social policy in, and of, the European Union .................................................................................. 10 2.2.1 Actors in the field of EU social policy: Commission, Council, Parliament ........................... 12 2.3 Research question and hypotheses .................................................................................................. 13 3 Methodology ........................................................................................................................................ 15 3.1 Document selection ......................................................................................................................... 15 3.2 Coding scheme ................................................................................................................................ 17 3.2.1 Intercoder reliability ............................................................................................................... 18 3.2.2 Determining policy priorities and political positioning of actors ........................................... 19 3.3 Analysis of the findings ................................................................................................................... 22 4 Findings ............................................................................................................................................... 23 4.1 Political positioning of the Commission and the European Parliament .......................................... 23 4.1.1 Left-right positioning of the European Commission .............................................................. 23 4.1.2 Left-right positioning of the largest party in the European Parliament .................................. 24 4.1.3 Policy priorities of the largest party in the European Parliament ........................................... 25 4.2 Analysing the work programmes .................................................................................................... 25 4.2.1 General observations .............................................................................................................. 26 4.2.2 Attention for institutional operations ...................................................................................... 29 4.2.3 Justice and home affairs ......................................................................................................... 31 4.2.4 Economic and financial affairs ............................................................................................... 35 4.2.5 Attention for social policy ...................................................................................................... 39 5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 43 5.2 Limitations ...................................................................................................................................... 48 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................. 51 Annex A: Special legislative procedures .......................................................................................................... I Annex B: European Parliament compositions (incoming parliaments) ......................................................... III Annex C: Coding scheme ................................................................................................................................ V Annex D: Attention for policy areas (in % of total number of sentences) .................................................... XII Annex E: Political positioning of the European Commission and its members ........................................... XIII 1 List of Figures Figure 2-1: Article 153(1) TFEU ................................................................................................................... 11 Figure 4-1: Top five policy areas in % of total work programme, 1995 - 2012 ............................................. 28 Figure 4-2: Attention for institutional operations, 1994 – 2012 (in % of total number of sentences) ............ 29 Figure 4-3: Attention for justice and home affairs, 1994 – 2012 (in % of total number of sentences) .......... 32 Figure 4-4: Terror* mentioned in work programmes 1995 - 2012 (in % of total number of words) ............. 33 Figure 4-5: Attention for economic and financial affairs, 1994 – 2012 (in % of total number of sentences) 36 Figure 4-6: Attention for social policy, 1994 – 2012 (in % of total number of sentences) ............................ 39 List of Tables Table 3-1: Policy categories in the coding scheme ........................................................................................ 17 Table 3-2: Krippendorff's alpha for the first draft coding scheme ................................................................. 18 Table 3-3: Krippendorff's alpha for final coding scheme............................................................................... 19 Table 4-1: Commission position (left-right) .................................................................................................. 23 Table 4-2: Left-right position of the largest party in the European Parliament.............................................. 24 Table 4-3: Policy priorities of the largest party in the EP .............................................................................. 25 Table 4-4: Correlations for institutional operations ......................................................................................