A rapid quantitative assessment of the EU legislative productivity over the recent years makes apparent that the EU faces increasing difficulties to adopt legislation. As a whole, EU directives, regulations and decisions are less numerous. They also require more time to be adopted. And the pattern of the legislative procedure shows increasingly signs of conflicts between and within EU institutions. This contribution proposes a model for explaining this trend over the last years. It supports the view that the growing difficulties of the EU to legislative results both from a widespread lack of public trust vis-à-vis the European level and from the internal evolution of EU institutions. The model is tested through a new comprehensive dataset developed in Sciences Po. The discussion also covers the on-going official emphasis put on the better legislation agenda by the European Commission – understood as a rationalization of the growing constraints faced by European legislators.
