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Synchronising out of gridlock: Temporal orderings in the Council

European Union
Asylum
Decision Making
Policy-Making
Radu-Mihai Triculescu
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München – LMU
Radu-Mihai Triculescu
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München – LMU

Abstract

This article explains the role of time in EU policymaking processes, specifically within the Council, a critical venue for policy formation and integration. Existing scholarship extensively explores various aspects of decision-making, such as bargaining, negotiation, and institutional roles. Yet, there is something left unexplained in the way the Council reaches decisions, and this can only be redressed by foregrounding temporal considerations in our analyses. Decision making in the Council has grown increasingly complex, with evolving actor constellations and ever-present sources of time pressure making the need for temporal coordination more pronounced. We propose the concept of 'synchronisation' as a unifying framework for understanding these dynamics at play. By focusing on the case of asylum reform, the article illustrates how gridlock and divergent Member State positions are overcome by synchronisation arrangements that harmonise the temporal preferences of actors. Specifically, the agreement reached by Justice and Home Affairs Ministers in June 2023 highlights the possibility of prevailing over such longstanding obstacles. By uncovering arrangements in the instrumental and actor dimensions of synchronisation, this work provides a new explanation for the process of consensus-building, offering a nuanced understanding of the temporal dimension in EU policymaking.