The EU was initially based on the principle of administrative autonomy of the member states. However, considering that the EU has developed far beyond inter-state cooperation in core policies, the scarce own administrative resources are striking. With the extension of EU policy-making also the working of its administrative structures have changed. Linked to the progressive conferral of policy competences, an incremental shift away from the principle of administrative autonomy occurred. To date, there is no single “EU bureaucracy” but a complex “European Administrative Space” based on multiple procedural rules and a convoluted mix of cooperation forms that have substantially hollowed out the initial principle of administrative autonomy of the Union’s member states. The paper (1) departs from the dominant notion of multi-level administration as a form of executive federalism and conceptualize the EAS as a compound system and form of integrated administration. Instead of assuming a layered system of non-intersecting administrative units that suggests institutionalist research questions, the compound model focuses on procedural dynamics and poses puzzles about the functioning and actor behavior within the EAS structure. (2) research questions are generated that tackle actual administrative practices on the national level to ask, how national public administrations accommodate EU policy making in: (a) the coordination systems of EU policy-making, (b) recruitment and career management, (c) the accountability control mechanisms. (3) empirical data on the German case is presented in order to, (4), draw conclusions on how participation in a compound administrative system plays out on a state’s bureaucracy.
