Small Decisions? The European Commission and the Transformation of the Role of Legal Expert Groups: The Case of Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination

The European Equality Law Network (EELN) was founded in 2014. It resulted from the merger of two gender equality and non-discrimination expert groups. The creation of the EELN may appear as a simple decision made to rationalize the landscape of EU expert groups. The objective of this article is to show that this merger indicates there have been important transformations in the role of expert groups and legal expertise in the field of EU equality policy. This seemingly small decision participates in a larger process of change. The legal experts and the Commission are no longer partners who are developing equality policy together: members of the EELN are seen merely as service providers. The article isolates three main explanations for this: the roles of the policy sector, the regulatory and enforcement politics of the Commission and policy instruments in the framework of the Commission's managerial turn during the 2010s.