Kristina Kraiko
Title: Small State Strategies to Influence the EU's Decision-Making Process. The Case of the Regulation Framework for the Free Flow of Non-Personal Data and the Estonia's Presidency in the European Council
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Külli Sarapuu
Opponent: Miiko Peris, MA, Government Office of Estonia
Defense: 7 June 2019
Abstract: his work provides an overview of some of the possibilities for small states to influence the European Union’s decision-making processes during the Presidency of the European Council. The case of the Regulation on a Framework for the Free Flow of Non-Personal Data in the European Union and the Estonia’s Presidency in the European Council is analysed. The study answers the question, what were Estonia’s strategies, as a small state, during its Presidency of the European Council to influence the European Union’s decision-making process when discussing the Regulation on a Framework for the Free Flow of Non-Personal Data in the European Union. In order to give an answer to this question, a combination of Tallberg 2004 and Grøn and Wivel’s 2011 methodologies on the strategies of the small states are used. Additionally, the time framework of Smeets and Vennix 2014 is used to divide the life of a file guided by a Presidency into logical steps. In order to contextualise the decisions made by the Estonian Presidency, eight civil servants at different levels of Estonian public service were interviewed for this study in addition to the document and literature analysis. It was shown in the study that the goals and the strategies of the Estonian Presidency of the European Council changed depending on the stage the regulation was in. It changed from the awareness raising State as a Norm Entrepreneur strategy to a compromise seeking State as a Self- Interested Mediator strategy.
Keywords: small states, European Union, Presidency, digital, strategies, influence
