Conclusions

This concludes the volume by summarising the major findings and assessing their broader implications. We briefly review the individual findings of each paper, observing that they collectively reinforce the importance of the subject of unelected legislators in the EU while also pointing to the complex and multiform nature of the phenomenon. We thus go on to argue that many of the unelected legislators identified here ought to become more central to EU studies than has traditionally been the case; that understanding their role may often be more important to understanding policy-making than knowledge of formal institutional structures; but that the prevalence of unelected legislators does not necessarily carry the negative normative implications for the EU that simplistic understandings of the legislative process might suggest.