Voters who participate in elections to the European Parliament tend to use these elections to punish their domestic governing parties. Many students of the EU therefore claim that the party-political composition of the Parliament should systematically differ from that of the Council. This study,...

Mit dem Beitritt der zehn neuen Mitgliedsstaaten zur Europäischen Union im Mai 2004 wird sich die bestehende Machtverteilung zwischen den EU-Staaten verändern. Die Erweiterung wird sich auf die Effizienz der Entscheidungsfindung auswirken und deshalb sind weitere institutionelle Reformen...

Current research on the main bodies of the European Union (Council, Commission, Parliament) tends to concentrate either on relations within these bodies, or on relations between them. The result is that little attention is paid to how these two intersect; that is, to how changes in relations...