Tacit procedural politics : institutional change and member states' strategies in police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters

Abstract

This article analyses the dynamics of procedural politics in the EU's Police and Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters across subsequent Treaty regimes (Amsterdam and Lisbon). In the course of legislative policy-making in this area, member states and the European Commission engage in strategic interactions with respect to procedural rules, whereby specifically member states attempt to contain integrationist legislation coming from the Commission through legislative preemption strategies. Drawing on Joseph Jupille's procedural politics approach, the article hypothesizes that member states' strategies are conditioned by several scope conditions, notably jurisdictional ambiguity, influence difference between different decision-making procedures, and prointegrationist case law from the European Court of Justice. I test these hypotheses by analysing the legislative process on a number of selected cases.