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The neglected effects of Europeanization in the member states

Daniela Beyer (Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research)

As a growing volume of EU legislation needs to be incorporated into national law, the transfer of policy competencies to the supranational level has left its mark on the portfolio of tasks for EU member states’ legislators. Looking beyond such immediate effects of Europeanization on the dynamics in domestic legislatures, Daniela Beyer argues that the transfer of competencies has shaped policy-making in EU member states in an indirect – and yet unnoticed – way. In her article “The neglected effects of Europeanization in the member states – policy-making in directly EU-influenced and sovereign domains” published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Daniela shows that the shifting of policy competencies to the European level frees up legislators’ policy-making capacities in domains that remained under member states’ sovereign control. National legislators can devote more attention and resources to such policy issues and change the way policy is produced in these domains. Analysing 35 years of policy-making in the German federal legislature, Daniela shows “that deepening European integration has an influence on member states’ domestic agenda composition, and thus on changing patterns for both their sovereign and directly EU-influenced policy-making.”