National Coordination of EU Policy: A Comparative Study of the Twelve “New” Member States

Abstract

European Union policy-making requires Member States to determine national positions by means of national coordination in order to defend their preferences. This article analyses the coordination systems of the twelve "new" Member States in the middle of 2009 and compares them along the two major lines of divergence in coordination systems: their centralisation and their coordination ambition. In so doing, it ties in with a framework developed by Kassim (2003) and plots the new Member States in a diagram which is compatible with that of Kassim, including thirteen old Member States. A pronounced diversity of coordination systems in the new Member States is found. At the aggregate level, the systems are relatively decentralised. Four countries even combine this with a selective coordination ambition. The article suggests that this can be explained by a lack of resources and proposes avenues for further research.

The Role of EU Pre-accession Assistance in the Establishment of National Coordination Structures for EU Funding: The Case of Croatia

“…CODEF did not have sufficient political or policy influence to ensure effective coordination across government ministries and agencies, in particular to overcome entrenched institutional resistance and traditional ways of working among officials that did not encourage information-sharing or cooperation. As such, the research supports findings for other Central and Eastern European countries relating to the importance of political and administrative opportunity structures in explaining variation in coordination (Gärtner et al 2011), but it also substantiates the arguments of Dimitrova and Toshkov (2007) that actors' preferences and domestic politics are key factors influencing patterns and processes of institutional change.…”

“…Coordination capability is regarded as one four key essential requirements for effective administrative capacity (Hertie School of Governance 2013). The accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe have faced the challenge of establishing the necessary coordination structures prior to their accession, which in many cases involved a paradigm shift from a hierarchical, legalistic and centralised yet ineffective planning to more inclusive, accountable and network modes of coordination -albeit with very different outcomes in terms of the structures, functioning and effectiveness of national coordination systems (Dimitrova and Toshkov 2007;Gärtner et al 2011). Similar challenges apply to candidate countries in South-East Europe (SEE).…”

Coordination of EU Policy Positions in Germany and Denmark: A Politics of Institutional Choice Approach

“…However, coordination with regard to the negotiations in the Council is the intersection common to all (Kassim et al 2000;Kassim et al 2001;Bulmer and Burch 2001;Wessels et al 2003;Kassim 2003a;Blumer and Lequesne ed. 2005;Dimitrova and Toshkov 2007;Fink-Hafner 2007;Panke 2010;Johansson and Raunio 2010;Gärtner et al 2011). Although the analytical vocabulary differs, the studies all draw similar conclusions, finding few signs of convergence between national coordination mechanisms.…”

Decentralized EU Policy Coordination in Crisis? The Case of Germany

“…More recent research, however, demonstrated the continuous relevance of the distinction between centralized and decentralized coordination (Jensen, 2014; Kassim, 2015). Despite its lower efficiency, some newer member states such as Romania or Slovakia deliberately adopted the decentralized, ministry‐focused model (Gärtner et al, 2011). On the other hand, the more Eurosceptic a member state's electorate and the higher the salience of EU policies, the likelier a centralization of coordination around the prime minister's office (Jensen, 2017; Kaniok and Galušková, 2018).…”