Plenary 'amendments' to committee reports : legislative powers of the European parliament committees

This paper questions the claim that the European Parliament (EP) is a legislature with strong committees. It examines the extent to which the plenary draws its legislative position on the basis of the draft committee reports under the codecision procedure. It is expected that the committees' impact is substantially decreased if an early agreement is reached with the Council of Ministers in informal trilogue meetings. Furthermore, due to the open amendment rule in plenary committees are expected to be more successful if the legislators drafting their reports have no special outlying interests, have relevant expertise, and are affiliated with big party groups. These hypotheses are tested on an original data set of the codecision reports which passed first reading in the 6th EP (2004-2009). The findings suggest that indeed informal trilogue agreements significantly undermine committees' legislative influence while rapporteurs' profiles do not have a significant effect on the adoption of committee reports in plenary.