Coalition Parties and Strategic Committee Appointments in the European Parliament

Policymaking in the Council of the EU regularly requires member states to delegate negotiation tasks to individual ministers. For coalition governments, this creates information asymmetries because it gives privileged access to information about the legislative process to the parties that hold the relevant ministerial portfolio while sidelining those that do not. This paper argues that bicameralism in the EU mitigates this delegation problem by enabling sidelined coalition parties to monitor legislative processes through committees in the European Parliament (EP). Committee work enables parties to engage with legislative files alongside their coalition partner's minister in the Council, thereby reducing information asymmetries within the coalition. The key empirical implication of this argument is that members of the EP are likely to pursue committee appointments in policy areas where they are sidelined in the Council. In addition, their choices should reflect their policy positions and the degree of conflict within the coalition. Analyzing original data on committee appointments in the four most recent legislative periods (2004–2024), I find strong support in line with this argument. I further show that these appointees are more likely to be assigned as rapporteurs. These findings contribute to our understanding of coalition policymaking and the role of committee appointments in the EU.