A dearth of legislative vetoes: why the Council and Parliament have been reluctant to veto Commission legislation

Several reforms have taken place at the EU level to try and address the criticism that EU decision-making suffers from a democratic deficit. Drawing on recent research, Michael Kaeding and Kevin M. Stack assess one such reform: the provision of powers for the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament to veto so called ‘secondary legislation’ put forward by the European Commission. They find that the use of these veto powers has been extremely limited, although this does not necessarily mean the reforms have been ineffective, but rather that they may have impacted on the bargaining dynamics of informal negotiations between the institutions.