How much do experts' ideas matter for the European Union's political agenda?

SCHMIDT, Vivien

doi:10.1111/jcms.70022

How much do experts' ideas matter for the European Union's political agenda?

dc.contributor.author	SCHMIDT, Vivien
dc.date.accessioned	2025-08-19T13:25:36Z
dc.date.available	2025-08-19T13:25:36Z
dc.date.issued	2025
dc.description	Published online: 05 August 2025	en
dc.description.abstract	Experts have over the years produced countless policy briefs, reports and documents in efforts to influence policy-makers' decisions about EU economic policy and governance. In a special category are the expert reports officially commissioned by EU institutional actors. In the past, the most influential such reports included the 1970 Werner report, the 1985 Cockfield report on completing the single market and the 1989 Delors report on monetary union, amongst others (see Gros, this issue). The latest examples are the reports by Enrico Letta (2024) on the single market and by Mario Draghi (2024) on competitiveness in the EU (see Chang, this issue; Gros, this issue; Moschella and Quaglia, this issue). These reports, much like the earlier ones, can be seen as game changers for the EU political agenda in terms of their levels of ambition and innovation. Whether the Letta and Draghi expert reports have a direct or immediate impact on the EU political agenda remains an open question. Much depends upon such imponderables as the political will of EU leaders in the European Council, the administrative capacities of the European Commission and the evolving politics of the European Parliament (EP) and of member states in an increasingly populist extreme right context. Institutional constraints or opportunities, political serendipity and timing are additional factors. Moreover, what the reports leave out is as important for the future as what they put in.	en
dc.description.sponsorship	This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - Wiley Transformative Agreement (2024-2027)	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.citation	Journal of common market studies, 2025, Vol. 63, No. S1, pp. 123-130	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.1111/jcms.70022
dc.identifier.endpage	130
dc.identifier.issue	S1
dc.identifier.startpage	123
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1814/93085
dc.identifier.volume	63
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.orcid.putcode	1814/80830:198388924
dc.publisher	Wiley	en
dc.relation.ispartof	Journal of common market studies	en
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess	en
dc.rights.license	Attribution 4.0 International	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.title	How much do experts' ideas matter for the European Union's political agenda?	en
dc.type	Article	en
dspace.entity.type	Publication
person.identifier.orcid	0000-0001-7764-0610
person.identifier.other	26583
relation.isAuthorOfPublication	bb4917d6-789e-4885-a491-5c7357ba1d7a
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery	bb4917d6-789e-4885-a491-5c7357ba1d7a