Empirical research has shown that after the Lisbon Treaty came into effect, the European Parliament has seen its powers over the negotiations of the European Union’s annual budget significantly reduced. The European Parliament has overall lost and the EU Council has largely won in determining spending outcomes for 2011 and immediate payments for the subsequent years. The first part of the paper investigates the reasons behind this loss of influence. The second part shows that, from this position of relative weakness in the budgetary negotiations, the Parliament has nevertheless sought to agenda-set for reform, sometimes successfully, in the three layers of the budget: annual expenditure; long-term expenditure; and the revenue side. Through process tracing and interviews with key decision-makers, the paper evaluates the Parliament’s successes and failures, the extent to which these are linked to the intended and unintended consequences of past decisions, and the circumstances under which the Parliament can maximise its limited power.
