National EU Coordination in Germany: Managing EU Relations in a System of Cooperative Federalism

Coordination is inherent to the organisation of the German political system. Embedded into the German cooperative federal system, EU coordination is multilevel and polycentric. Coordination is organised along three axes: partisan (political parties in coalition governments and parliamentary control), sectorial (strong departmental principle for line ministries), and horizontal (division of competence between federal and state-levels). To explain the underlying principles and how the system operates, in particular why German coordination appears rather reactive and ex post, the paper introduces the main actors on the EU, federal and state-levels, outlines the elaborate apparatus of standardised coordination and discusses to which degree dynamics of centralised/fragmented, technical/political and formal/informal coordination-styles capture stability and change in German EU coordination.