

Democratic Implications of the Treaty of Lisbon
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accountability. As was discussed earlier, trilogues are restricted,
inaccessible and opaque; their memberships neither officially
defined nor public known. In general, a trilogue consists of the
chair of the relevant Council Working Party and the chair of
COREPER, who dominate and are fully involved in the process.
Interaction within trilogues is not structured by codified rules, and
their seclusion is neither formally stipulated, nor publicly justified
(Reh, 2014: 825). This mode of operating narrows down the
number of
de facto
decision makers to a very small set of key
actors, allowing them to command their own sets of information,
exchange views, adjust given legislative proposals at will, and build
reciprocal trust, while other ministers have little possibility to learn
about the course of events (Farrell & Héritier, 2004: 1200-1204;
Jensen & Martinsen, 2012: 8; Kirpsza, 2013: 195).
7
Another far-reaching effect of trilogues and reaching early
conclusions on Council decision-making is the erosion of the
culture of consensus, or the principle of diffuse reciprocity, which
was deeply embedded in the Council. The culture of consensus and
the principle of diffuse reciprocity characterizes the way Member
States, in reaching legislative compromises within the Council,
respect each other’s vital interests and avoid creating structural
minorities that are consistently overruled in decisions (Farrell &
Héritier, 2004: 1195). The prevalence of trilogues quietly pushed
aside that principle. During trilogue negotiations, representatives
of the Presidency may already be building a coalition with some
few Member States to secure the required number of votes (Kirpsza,
2013: 196). In other words, in order to secure the desired
legislative results, the Council presidency may provide select
7
Involving increasingly limited number of key actors in policy making behind
closed-doors is a problem not unique to the EU but faced by many
democracies today. The ubiquity of the problem is no reason for the EU to
be complacent with such kind of practices, however. If democracy is already
encountering serious challenges at the national level, copying flawed
practices at the supranational level only complicates the situation and renders
democracy even more vulnerable.