Journey to the centre of the EU council: the case study of the horizontal working party on cyber issues

The Council of the EU remains one of the least researched EU institutions. One gap concerns the circumstances under which its working parties are created. This article examines the establishment of the Horizontal Working Party on Cyber Issues (HWPCI). The analysis suggests that its creation resulted from a combination of factors: the maturation of the cyber agenda, the need to process legislative files, the need for internal coordination, and informal political dynamics within the Council. These factors are interpreted as an interaction between rationalising pressures and socialising practices. Rather than testing neo-institutionalist theories or proposing a new model, the article illustrates how existing institutionalist approaches can be refined by shifting attention from the operation of Council structures to the conditions under which they come into being.