Institutional reform and decision-making efficiency in the European Union

This article analyzes whether institutional reform has enabled the European Union (EU) to deal efficiently with an expanding legislative agenda, We use the time lag between a Commission proposal and a Council decision as the central indicator of EU decision-making efficiency and develop four hypotheses about factors influencing the proposal-decision time lag. We test these hypotheses by analyzing all proposals for binding EU legislation made between 1984 and 1994 using event history analysis. Our results show that institutional reform had a substantial impact on decision- making efficiency and suggest that the EU is capable of an effective institutional response to an expending legislative agenda. However, decision-making efficiency is not the only goal guiding EU institutional reform.