Non-documents for Big Decisions: The Commission and the EEC–Japan Automotive Agreement (1991)

Abstract

This article highlights some material aspects of informal governance by analysing the unsigned confidential documents intended to drive the future of the European automotive sector in 1991. Whilst it was long thought that the EEC–Japan agreement had been unwritten, this study reveals that it was a combination of oral and written statements, bilateral decisions and unilateral interpretations. These ambiguities have been used by the Commission to achieve the impossible: providing for one thing and its opposite in order to satisfy extremely divided opinions. Using public and private archives of several stakeholders, the article underlines the Commission's power over institutional (Member States and the European Parliament) and private (industry and NGOs) players. Whilst recent studies have pointed to repeated unwritten rules to temper informality leading to a democratic deficit, the 1991 non-consensual consensus eluded any tacit rule because it lay in the grey area of diplomacy, economics and law.