

Democratic Implications of the Treaty of Lisbon
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Council decision making. An increase in public and political
awareness makes it riskier for national bureaucrats to finalize deals
independently, and for ministers to simply rubber stamp their
decisions. The resulting increase in the direct involvement of ministers
generates more scrutiny both at the European and national levels,
strengthening the accountability of government representatives in
the Council and the oversight of their national parliaments and
electorates. To summarize, the Treaty of Lisbon, by empowering
the EP, is supposed to cast greater light on Council decisions, and
increase the capacity of domestic parliaments to hold national
executives accountable for their actions taken in the Council.
(B) Empirical Evaluation
As was seen in the earlier discussion on the impact of co-
decision on the EP, strengthening the EP’s legislative power leads
to an increase in the load, as well as the complexity, of legislation
in the EU. Consequently, the more the EP is empowered to act as
an equal co-legislator, the more heavily reliant on trilogue meetings
the Commission, the EP, and the Council become as they attempt
to cope with the increased complexity and work overload (Reh,
2014: 823-826). The Treaty of Lisbon may have initially had
politicizing and accountability-enhancing effects on the Council,
but these were quickly offset by increased reliance on trilogue
meetings to deliver results. Instead of prompting ministers to
become directly involved in decision-making, further
empowerment of the EP by the Treaty of Lisbon has led to less
ministerial involvement and more decisions being reached
exclusively at lower levels of the Council hierarchy (Häge &
Naurin, 2013: 954). Hence, the continual rise of legislative acts
being passed after a first reading, shown in Figures 6 and 7,
indicates that there has been an increase in informal and secluded
decision-making in Council. Between 1999 and 2009, agreements
were reached on 50% of co-decision files at the first reading (an
average of the blue proportion between the second and third columns