TACTICS OF SMALL EU MEMBER STATES TO COUNTERBALANCE THEIR SIZE-DISADVANTAGES

Beside the top 6 EU Member States (Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, and Poland) whose combined population represents 355.79 million or 70% of the total EU population, the 30% remaining is comprised of 22 Member States that  have fewer votes in the Council (Romania, Netherlands, Greece, Czech Republic, Belgium, Hungary, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Bulgaria, Denmark, Slovakia, Finland, Ireland, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta).

Voting and bargaining power are characterized by the ability of states to use their political or economic weight in the EU, in order to influence agenda-setting and decision-making so that outcomes reflect national interests to an extent, proportional to their bargaining assets. Small states have fewer votes in the Council, which decreases the likelihood for successful shaping. Moreover, this even influences pre-negotiation bargaining. The European Commission is more sensitive to big rather than small states  In addition, small states are less able to offer side payments to bigger states in exchange for support on a specific issue. Lower economic power makes smaller members also more vulnerable than their bigger counterparts. Their alternatives for unilateral action or cooperation outside the EU are more limited, should cooperation fail in the EU, which leaves them worse off than bigger states . Finally, effective bargaining requires a well-staffed administrative infrastructure with expertise, clear responsibilities and coordination procedures in order to allow states to develop and present coherent positions in Brussels . Yet, many small states seriously grapple with their domestic coordination of European policies, which also makes effective bargaining difficult. Smaller member states have also more limited argumentative power and are therefore, less likely to be successful via arguing or framing in the agenda-setting and decision-making stages. Policy expertise and scientific resources are crucial to persuade others from a particular position . Yet, smaller states have lesser administrative capacities as well as have a lower number of experts in national delegations in Brussels and a lower number of personnel to prepare Council meetings or establish and maintain direct contacts to the Commission . This renders effective arguing across multiple arenas more difficult. Moreover, small states’ contact to European interest groups and epistemic communities are less strong, so they gain fewer additional ideational resources, which could be used for argumentative strategies. Finally, small states are less able to exert argumentative influence than their bigger counterparts, and  many of them have fewer experiences with EU politics and policies than older member states.

As a result many small states use institutional coordination or develop bilateral strategic partnerships with other EU Member States as a means to increase their collective bargaining power.

1. Multilateral Institutional Coordination

Multilateral institutionalized coordination takes place on the basis of geographic proximity. These regional forums differ significantly in their degree of institutionalization, the coherency of shared member states interests and the frequency to which the platforms are used to increase the bargaining leverage and voting power in EU negotiations.

The Benelux Group: The strongest form of regional multilateral coordination is the Benelux group composed of Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. Over the years, the Benelux platform has been often and successfully used in order to strengthen the voice of its members in EU policy-making processes .

The Nordic Group: Denmark, Finland and Sweden enhance their bargaining and voting powers in the EU via the Nordic cooperation, which also includes the non-EU members Norway and Iceland. The Nordic cooperation is highly institutionalized, instutionally differentiated and relatively frequently used but it is flexible. It allows for of intergovernmental and parliamentary policy consultation and coordination in various constellations (e.g. The Nordic Council and Nordic Council of Ministers.

The Baltic Group: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania form the Baltic group, which is institutionalized to a medium extent: Meetings are often regarded as successful coordination devices, but take place in an irregular, infrequent manner, depending on pre existing shared policy interests .

The Visegrad Group: Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland form the Visegràd group (V4). The V4 is not strongly institutionalized and it is not the primary loci of collaboration between its members . Since the four members have few common interests, they utilize the Visegràd group not very successfully .

Not all small states use institutionalized coordination with other EU members as a means to increase the collective bargaining power. Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia do not engage in multilateral forms of policy coordination

2. Strategic bilateral partnerships

Strategic bilateral partnerships with powerful states are less often applied than institutionalized regional coordination. A well known form of such partnerships takes place between Portugal and its bigger neighbour Spain . There are several issue-specific partnerships, such as between Ireland and France in agricultural policies or Austria and Germany the transport area.  In these settings, bilateral consultations are frequently evoked in preparatory stages and ongoing policy-making processes. If partnerships are not purely of an ad-hoc character, there is issue-specific variation: Smaller partners especially side with their bigger ones, when they are not strongly interested in a particular issue. With the exception of Malta, which due to its history has medium strong and occasionally used ties to the UK, and to a lesser extent the Czech Republic and Slovenia, "new" small members have not yet entered into institutionalized bilateral partnerships with a bigger state. Although Hungary and the Slovak Republic are geographically close to Poland, frequent bilateral intergovernmental contacts to coordinate joint EU positions with this big state are absent. This is partially due to their limited number of common positions on EU policies . In addition, some of new small member states tend to establish bilateral contacts to old small rather than old big states, such as Cyprus with Greece, or Slovenia with Austria. Compared to older small EU members, "new" member states rely less frequently on institutionalised forms of intergovernmental cooperation and have difficulties to find bigger allies in order to support their positions in bargaining processes .