TERMINACIONES, SOLADOS Y REVESTIMIENTOS GENERALIDADES:

This sub-section applies the independent variable ‘bureaucratic pressure’ to bureaucratic interaction within the Commission. It identifies the different regulatory sub-actors described in chapters 4.2.1., 4.3.2. and 4.3.4. Based on this, it shows how Commissioners and other DGs can direct the behaviour of technical officials.

The Commission consists of an administrative and a political level. The administrative level is divided into several Directorates General (DGs). These, in turn, can be subdivided into ‘technical’ DGs with policy responsibilities, DGs with responsibilities for external relations and so-called ‘horizontal’ DGs. All DGs have different mandates. Within each DG, responsibilities are divided among different departments and units. Each DG is led by a Director General. At political level, the Commission is made up of 28 Commissioners whose responsibilities broadly reflect the divisions between the different DGs. For the clarity of the terminology and the distinction between the political and administrative levels within the Commission, figure 8 offers an overview of the organisation of the Commission. The organisational structure depicted and the names of the DGs and the relevant Commissioners correspond to the organisation of the Commission at the time of the Juncker Commission56_,57_.

56 _{Commission Vice-Presidents were for the first time introduced with the Juncker Commission in 2014.} 57 _{The names of DGs and the responsibilities of Commissioners slightly change with the appointment of new}

Commissioners. For the DGs and Commissioners which are relevant for the empirical case studies discussed in this book, changes to names of DGs and the responsibilities of the relevant Commissioners are introduced in the corresponding case studies.

114 Abbrev.

DG

DG name Relevant European Commissioner

Abbrev. DG

DG name Relevant Commissioner AGRI Agriculture and Rural

Development

Agriculture and Rural Development

FISMA Fin. Stability, Fin. Services, Capital Markets Union

Fin. Stability, Fin. Services, Capital Markets Union

BUDG Budget Financial Programming and the Budget

SANTE Health and Food Safety

Health and Food Safety CLIMA Climate Action Climate Action HOME Migration and Home

Affairs

Home Affairs CNCT Comm. Networks,

Content and Technology

Digital Agenda ECHO European Civil

Protection, Human Aid Operation

International Cooperation, Human Aid and Crisis Response

COMM Communication Communication HR Human Resources and Security

Inter-Institutional Relations and Administration COMP Competition Competition MARKT Internation Market

and Services

Internation Market and Services

ECFIN Economic and Financial Affairs

Economic and Financial Affairs

JUST Justice and Consumers

Justice, Fund. Rights and Citizenship

EAC Education and Culture Education, Culture And Youth

MARE Maritime Affairs and Fisheries

Maritime Affairs and Fisheries

EMPL Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion

Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion

MOVE Mobility and Transport

Transport

ENER Energy Energy REGIO Regional and Urban

Policy

Regional Policy NEAR Neighbourhood and

Enlargement

Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy

RTD Research and

Innovation

Research, Innovation and Science

GROW Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship

Industry and Entrepreneurship

SG Secretariat General

ENV Environment Environment TAXUD Taxation and

Customs Union

Taxation and Customs Union, Audit, Anti-Fraud DEVCO International

Cooperation and Development

Development TRADE Trade Trade

DIGIT Informatics DGT Translation

SCIC Interpretation ESTAT Eurostat

JRC Joint Research Centre FPI Service for Foreign

Policy Instruments Figure 8: Organisation of the Commission at political and administrative level

115

Based on figure 8, the sub-actors distinguished in sections chapters 4.2.1., 4.3.2. and 4.3.4. can now be identified. Technical officials correspond to the bureaucratic officials of the DG (subsequently: technical DG officials) that is in the lead on an issue58_{. Regulatory leaders are the Commissioner and the Director}

General leading a DG. Other bureaucratic actors are the DGs which can influence the pursuit of regulatory cooperation in certain context, but which focus on other objectives. In the pursuit of regulatory cooperation, these other bureaucratic actors are officials and the Director General from DG Trade as well as the Trade Commissioner59_{. For analytical simplicity it shall be assumed that preferences}

of technical officials within a DG overlap to a considerable extent60_.

Commissioners and Directors General are assumed to have slightly different preferences from technical officials (for this assumption see also Elsig & Dupont, 2012: 895). This reflects their lower structural embeddedness in a DG and a lower degree of structural uncertainty that enables them to consider new ideas and work on the basis of personal convictions.

In the administration of day-to-day activities, technical DG officials have discretion in their decision and prioritisation of different issues (Pollack, 2005). Heads of units and department directors report to the leadership at administrative and political level about the administration of these day-to-day activities in two weekly coordination meetings: at administrative level between heads of units, department directors and the Director General and at political level including the participation of the Commissioner. Each meeting is chaired by the Director General of a DG and the responsible Commissioner respectively. Heads of units and department directors can use these coordination meetings with the Director General and the Commissioner to propose issues and tasks themselves. Due to the burden and overload of officials, this is, however, uncommon (see also Pollack, 2005).

Officials from other DGs and Commissioners are likely to have different preferences than the technical DG regulators. Their preferences can be deduced in analogy to the deduction of the preferences of the technical DG regulators in the previous sub-section. Above I have specified that actors’ preferences are shaped by subjectively defined material interests and normative orientations. Besides, I have linked the subjective definition of a material interest to the ‘mandate’ of a regulator. One source of variation in preferences among regulatory actors within the Commission is thus the ‘mandate’ and the understanding of legitimate behaviour of a DG in the Commission. Another source are normative orientations, influenced by the personal beliefs held by actors. Among the individual regulatory actors specified by

58 _{The ‘lead’, i.e. the competence to draft a proposal, coordinate with DGs and implement a decision, reflects the}

mandate, or ‘missions’, of the different DGs. An issue, or ‘dossier’, is officially allocated to a DG that is subsequently in the lead by a decision of the College of Commissioners.

59 _{This operationalisation reflects the distinction by Elsig and Dupont (2012) of three types of bureaucratic actors}

in trade and regulatory negotiations within the Commission: (1) bureaucratic officials in the lead DG, (2) officials who focus on other objectives (usually from other DGs) and (3) politically appointed agents, i.e. the Commissioners.

60_{Empirical research by Kassim et al. (2013) finding a strong ideational coherence among officials working in a}

116

Elsig and Dupont (2012) above, only politically appointed agents, i.e. Commissioners, can be reasonably expected to have the capability in order to shape the preference of a regulator as an individual61_.

Bureaucratic pressure on regulatory cooperation arises at administrative and at political level within a DG and at political level within another DG. Existing research confirms that for the formation of the agenda, administrative and political leadership is important (Hartlapp et al., 2010: 10). First, in the coordination between the political and administrative level, bureaucratic pressure results from the availability of the Director General from the technical DG and the Commissioner to assume administrative and political leadership. At administrative or political level within a DG, the Director General of the DG and the respective Commissioner can task bureaucratic officials to elaborate a proposal or strategy on a regulatory cooperation issue. The task to identify issues for regulatory cooperation then sets off the strategy formation process outlined in the next sub-section.

Second, in the coordination at political and administrative levels across the DGs, bureaucratic pressure results from a suggestion at political level in DG Trade, notably the Commissioner, to pursue regulatory cooperation through an international agreement rather than through discussions between regulators alone. The pursuit of regulatory cooperation through trade negotiations shifts the ‘lead’ from the technical DG to DG Trade. This leads to an overlap of internal jurisdictions, which may produce ‘turf wars’ between different individual Commission Directorate Generals (DGs) over the formation of the Commission strategies (Dijkstra, 2009). In line with the process illustrated in the next section, this suggestion should lead to a task to officials in DG Trade to identify issues for regulatory cooperation. As DG Trade has a different ‘mission’ than technical DGs, i.e. trade liberalisation, the assessment of the relative costs and benefits of regulatory cooperation likely differs from the -initial status quo- assessment of officials (and administrative and political leaders) of the technical DGs and may cause a different policy preference on regulatory cooperation within DG Trade than within technical DGs (Sapir, 2011). Bureaucratic pressure at political level in another DG, i.e. pressure exerted by the Trade Commissioner, can thus task officials from the technical DG to elaborate a proposal or strategy on an issue. In the latter case, officials from the DG Trade coordinate with officials from the technical DG to contribute and provide input on the issue, either through informal consultations or formal inter-service consultations. This process will be explained in further detail in the next sub-section. For now, it shall be maintained that both administrative or political leadership within the DG as well as political leadership in another DG, however, constrain the discretion of technical officials and force them to act.

61 _{There is a growing literature underlining the influence of personal convictions and ideas on institutional choices}

of actors, calling itself ‘actor-centred constructivism’ (e.g. Saurugger, 2013). For a detailed discussion of the influence of the mandate of a regulator, distinguished among different DGs within the Commission, see previous literature (Kassim et al., 2013; Smith, 2013; Trondal, 2012; Frennhoff-Larsén, 2007).

117 Figure 9 shows the two sources of bureaucratic pressure:

Figure 9: Sources of bureaucratic pressure

Political leadership of the Trade Commissioner and political leadership of the technical DG Director General or Commissioner are thus likely to shift the balance of internal assessments of costs and benefits of regulatory cooperation in favour of regulatory cooperation and thus lead to a collective Commission preference ‘regulatory cooperation’. Yet, it cannot be deduced that shifts in the leadership among different DGs and Commissioners can explain the choice among the regulatory cooperation strategies developed in chapter 3.3. The pursuit of regulatory cooperation may occur through any of the forms other than non-cooperation delineated in section 3.4. Hypothesis 1 can therefore be operationalised as follows:

H1a: The presence of bureaucratic pressure from the Director General, Commissioner or Trade Commissioner leads technical lead DG officials to choose ‘regulatory alignment’, ‘equivalence’, ‘alignment of implementation procedures’ or ‘information exchange’.

H1b: The absence of bureaucratic pressure leads technical lead DG officials to pursue regulatory competition.

Bureaucratic pressure arising from the involvement of the political and administrative leadership from the lead policy DG

Bureaucratic pressure arising from the involvement of the political and administrative leadership from a non-technical DG, i.e. normally an external DG

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In sum, this sub-section has operationalised the independent variable ‘bureaucratic pressure’ to specific actors within the Commission. It has shown that administrative or political leadership by the Director General of the technical lead DG, the respective Commissioner or the Trade Commissioner forces technical lead DG officials to act on an issue upon which they may not have acted otherwise.