Special Issue : winners and losers in european union decision making

This special issue examines legislative decision-making in the European Union (EU). By focusing on specific examples of legislative decision-making and actors’ preferences in those situations, we aim to address questions of interest to mainstream Europeanists. Two contributions identify and attempt to explain which actors – of the Commission, the European Parliament and the individual member states – won and lost in controversial policy decisions in recent years. A third investigates shifts in actors’ positions during the bargaining process that takes place between the introduction of a Commission proposal and the adoption of the legislative acts. A fourth article examines measures of member states’ power that take into consideration the policy positions they favour, as well as the number of votes they hold in the Council