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.