Negotiating Under Cross-Pressure? How Member State Representatives Handle Conflicting Policy Frames in the EU Multilevel System

A classic question in European integration research concerns the role of national vs. supranational factors for forming member states’ preferences and positions. This paper approaches this question in a new way by looking at how member state representatives are affected by cross-pressure from different supranational and national policy frames. The permanent representatives (PermReps) in Brussels constitute the core of the EU:s negotiation machine. In addition, they are national actors embedded in the supranational context, and therefore exposed to both national and supranational policy frames. From quantitative and qualitative document analysis, as well as interviews with representatives for the Commission, policy frames for 20 legislative proposals, and for 5 member countries, are derived. Next, interviews with the government representatives in Brussels who were responsible for negotiating the 20 proposals in the Council of the EU, from the five selected member states, are conducted. This way, the frames active in the minds of these PermReps are compared to the already defined frames at different levels, in order to assess to what extent the PermReps are ‘captured’ by the Brussels environment to adopt frames that are different from those at the domestic level.