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This article examines the increasing relevance of Islam and religion in the institutional arrangement of the EU post-Maastricht and the future policy implications for the complex political system of the EU. By adopting a combination of qualitative methodologies that are theoretically rooted in historical institutionalism and in a systemic view of the EU, the paper studies the emergence of Islam and religion as policy issues in two institutional settings, the European Commission and the European Parliament, during the 1990s and up to the first decade of the twenty-first century. The analysis shows a growing attention to faith communities on the part of the Commission, in the post-Maastricht context, culminating in the elaboration of semi-official avenues for encounter and dialogue with religious groups. It also indicates how, in turn, these semi-official practices and the ideas behind them have gradually imposed themselves upon multiple levels of the EU political system, thus opening up an institutional space in the EU for consultations with and 'informal policies' towards faith communities, both within and outside the EU borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates how informal rules in the European Union change in the periods between formal treaty revisions. On the basis of a case study on the White Paper on Governance presented by the European Commission in July 2001, it shows how institutional change is driven by conflict between the Commission and the European Parliament. The conflict concerns the development of informal rules to structure the interaction of the Commission and the Parliament with Europe's civil society. The interaction with civil society organisations is very important for the EU bodies because it allows them to acquire resources that are indispensable in order to fulfil and expand their organisational role. An additional aim of this article is to examine how these institutional developments might influence the long-term development of formal treaty rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]