The EU Decision-Making Procedures : Some Insight from Non Cooperative Game Theory

The European Union decision-making process involves three main actors : the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament. Depending on the issue which is voted upon, there are three possible procedures to make a decision. These are : the proposal procedure, the cooperation procedure and the co-decision procedure. It has often been claimed that the role of the parliament has increased with the cooperation procedure and with the co-decision procedure. The aim of this paper is to verify this assertion. The procedures are modelled as games in extensive form. Simplifying assumptions are made. The set of propositions, amendments and all possible final decisions is represented by the real line. Each player has a preferred position in the real line. Payoff functions are defined as the opposite of the distance from the final decision to the most preferred one. The cost of time is not taken into account. The information is perfect. The games are solved by backward induction. The results show that the introduction of the cooperation procedure has not increased the Parliament’s role. In the co-decision procedure, the parliament’s preference only indirectly influences the final decision via the Conciliation Committee, which has a veto right.