Regulatory co-ordination in the EU: a cross-sector comparison

The paper examines what drives national regulators’ attitudes towards and engagement with EU regulatory co-ordination as facilitated by EU agencies and offices. It suggests that a bureaucratic politics perspective can counteract shortcomings of explanations conventionally advanced in the EU governance literature by showing that national regulators’ attitudes towards co-ordination are driven by the aim to protect their turf. This is empirically demonstrated by a comparison of attitudes to co-ordination across maritime safety and food control authorities in the UK and Germany that draws on original document analysis and semi-structured interviews with British, German and EU officials. UK and German food control authorities have a positive attitude towards EU co-ordination, but the maritime safety authorities contest it. While the food control authorities use EU co-ordination to enhance their bureaucratic turf vis-à-vis lower-level authorities, the maritime safety authorities perceive EU coordination to threaten their established position in the International Maritime Organization.