The institutional problem-solving capacities of the council : the committee of permanent representatives and the methods of community

The quiet evolution of the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper) into a de facto decision-making body has received surprisingly little attention by integration researchers. Even less attention has been paid to the novel institutional form and underlying rationality of this forum at the interface between the national and Community levels. Based on extensive semi-structured interviews with members of the Brussels’ permanent representations, this essay examines how Coreper maintains the performance and output of the Council through the production of a distinct culture of compromise and community-method. The result, empirically demonstrated in case studies of the 1994 local elections directive and of the 1996 Helms-Burton countermeasures, is a shared commitment to finding solutions, where membership in the collective decision-making process has become part of the rational calculus of defining and defending self-interests. These findings suggest the need to modify the instrumentalist, ‘hard bargaining’ image of EU decision-making.