1Informal Rules and the EU’s Intergovernmental Conferences

Please do not quote without permission Institutions, understood as formal and informal rules, have been shown to be fundamental in organising political life. Although a large literature has gathered evidence from various negotiating forums, so far the implications of this finding for international negotiations have been neglected. In this paper, I hypothesize that informal institutions should play an important role in the EU’s Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs). I submit that they fulfil the functions of reducing transactions costs, information asymmetries, and establishing a mediator. Empirically, I first show that informal rules and procedures indeed exist in IGCs. I then discuss the probable functions of these rules, and then discuss the reasons for institutional change