Europeanisation and institutional compatibility: implementing European regional policy in Germany

‘Partnership’, which views European policy-making as a process in which authorities from different levels of government and semi-public actors act as partners in pursuit of a common goal, can be viewed as a European institution that the European Commission has sought to give normative content. By distinguishing between different levels of the European policy process, this paper offers an account of the impact ‘partnership’ has had at different stages of the policymaking process. Analysing evidence from the operation of the Structural Funds in the new German Länder, it is shown that ‘partnership’ can have strong mobilisation/legitimisation effects vis-à-vis subnational actors in the European policy process—effects which national authorities sometimes find difficult to control. It is also shown, however, that there can exist formidable obstacles to the implementation of ‘partnership’ in the Member States. Analysing the interactions of European and entrenched domestic institutions, the paper challenges the often presumed compatibility between ‘partnership and Germany’s co-operative federalism.