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Investigating policy complexity in the European Union

The complexity of its laws and regulations has repeatedly been identified as one of the key challenges facing the European Union (EU). Both among EU scholars and practitioners, it is well recognized that the complexity of EU law not only implies enormous managerial challenges for those in power and their bureaucracies, but also involves significant cognitive burdens on the public. Yet, how can we distinguish rather simple from more complex policy content empirically? How can we explain variance of policy complexity across issue areas and time? And how does this complexity matter for political processes in the EU and the Member States?

The Emmy Noether Research Group "EUPLEX - Coping with Policy Complexity in the European Union", led by Dr. Steffen Hurka at LMU Munich, addresses these important questions. On this website, you can find information about the project, the research team, current publications and data. Feel free to contact us at hello@euplex.org for any further questions or ideas for cooperation.

"We must be inventors of simplicity which must lead to a collective examination of conscience, firstly within the Commission, for whom the pen must be lighter and the texts plainer (...); the quest for compromise at Council level results in texts which are too complicated, even incomprehensible."

Jacques Delors, then President of the Commission, in a speech to the European Parliament on 10 June 1992 (as cited in an Opinion of the Economic and Social Committee on Plain Language).

News

2020-02-11 Paper presentation at the EPSA 2020 Annual Conference in Prague

Steffen Hurka and Max Haag will present the paper "The evolution of policy complexity in the European Union" at the 10th Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association (EPSA) in Prague, 18-20 June 2020.

2020-02-05 Panel "Coping with Policy Complexity in the European Union" at the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union

Steffen Hurka will chair a panel on "Coping with Policy Complexity in the European Union" at the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union, which takes place at Luiss University in Rome, 3-6 June 2020. The panel is part of the "Institutional and Procedural Dynamics in EU Decision-making" section. Find out more on the ECPR website.

2019-10-01 New project researcher

Maximilian Haag officially joins the project as a doctoral researcher. For the next three years, Max will be a part of the EUPLEX team and write his dissertation on decision-making in the EU at LMU Munich. The team welcomes him and wishes him good luck!

2019-08-12 Project presentation in EU Research

A new article summarizing the project’s objectives is out now in the EU Research magazine. Find it on Issuu.

2019-07-10 New project publication in European Union Politics

"Policy complexity and legislative duration in the European Union" by Steffen Hurka and Maximilian Haag is out now (online first) in European Union Politics. The paper analyzes the influence of policy complexity on the duration of the decision-making process in the EU. Find the paper and replication data on our Publications page and an accompanying blog post on the LSE EUROPP blog.

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2019-07-01 New project student assistant

Nelly Keusch joins the project as a Student Assistant. For the next months, Nelly will help lay the foundations for the project to run efficiently.

2019-04-01 Project start

As of today, the DFG-funded EUPLEX project is officially up and running! For the next years, Dr. Hurka and colleagues will be busy collecting, evaluating and analyzing data on policy complexity in the EU.

Funding

EUPLEX receives funding from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) through the Emmy Noether program. Details can be found on the DFG Gepris website.

Meet the EUPLEX team

Team photo — The EUPLEX project team in January 2020