Аннотация:Abstract The smooth adoption of the European Union (EU) defence procurement directive in 2009 is puzzling, because member states had fiercely opposed legislation for the sensitive defence-industrial sector before. We argue that the Commission's strategic usage of judicial politics changed member states' opportunity structure and, by this, transformed a blocking majority of member states into legislative consensus. As it drew on new case law, the Commission pushed member states and threatened to leave the regulation of defence procurement uncontrolled to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In parallel, it promised member states to restore legal certainty and political control if they would approve EU legislation on defence procurement. Following a process-tracing logic, we compare the failed Commission initiatives until 2005 with the adoption of the directive in 2009. Finally, the available evidence is checked against alternative explanations. Keywords: Defence policyEuropean CommissionEuropean Court of Justicejoint-decision trapjudicial politicspublic procurement ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and interview partners, our colleagues in Munich and Salzburg, with whom we discussed previous versions in two research colloquia, and in particular Michael Eßig, Andreas Glas, Berthold Rittberger, Susanne K. Schmidt and Doris Wydra. A seed grant of the Stiftung Deutsch-Amerikanische Wissenschaftsbeziehungen (SDAW) is gratefully acknowledged. Notes As one element of our empirical analysis, we systematically compared all 39 publicly available submissions regarding the Commission's Green Paper, including all larger member states and major private players in the field.
