While Member State administrations have been an important part of the EU lobbying system for decades (Hüttemann, 2023), they are usually rather perceived as recipients of lobbying activities. Thus, relatively little is known about how MS themselves act as lobbyists (Panke, 2012). However, actively uploading interests on the European level is pivotal for Member State administrations and seems to be augmenting: The qualified majority voting in the Council and the shift of competences to the European level (Classen, 2014) as well as crises that particularly unfold differences amongst Member States amplify this need. Thus, it becomes increasingly important for MS administrations to campaign more intensively for their positions, to organise majorities at the European level and to push through regulation that is beneficial to their own interests in the long term. Nonetheless, relatively little attention has been paid to the conditions of Member States’ lobbying success as well as to non-organisational factors determining assertiveness, despite some evidence about their importance (Sepos, 2005, p. 184; Kassim, 2000). Moreover, “we still miss ways to assess who wins and loses” (Brandsma et al., 2021, p. 4-5) in mostly informal negotiation arenas and bargaining contexts. Hence, the proposed paper aims at partially closing this gap, tackling member state assertiveness and influence in European negotiation arenas both theoretically by providing a more differentiated framework of which factors determine assertiveness as well as empirically.

Firstly, the conditions of MS assertiveness are discussed and reflected against the existing literature from a theoretical angle. We add to the existing literature that focuses mainly on coordination (Scharpf, 1988; Spence, 1999; Metcalfe, 1994; Wright, 1996; Lequesne, 1993; Kassim et al., 2000a; Kassim, 2001) by arguing that the assertiveness of member state actors at the European level does not only depend on structural or organisational factors at the macro level but also on two other categories of factors: first, on individual factors at the micro level and, second, on external environmental conditions. Drawing on the psychological literature on negotiation and lobbying research, we theoretically discuss which factors might mostly drive assertiveness on the EU-level and whether there could be a relation between co-ordination and individual factors.

Secondly, relying both on a large-N online survey amongst German and EU-level senior officials and complementary in-depth interviews conducted in 2021/2022, the article empirically examines assertiveness in the EU multi-level system. We provide empirical evidence regarding the conditions of member state assertiveness, with our data supporting the hypothesis that coordination (in the sense of representing consistent and coordinated positions) is a necessary, but not sufficient condition. The assertiveness of MS administrations is moreover determined by micro factors such as diplomatic and individual negotiation skills, individual networking capabilities within and between arenas, language skills and the individual ability to anticipate the positions and strategies of other participants. Greater degrees of freedom for the individual actors and their ability to think in terms of pragmatic compromises also have a positive effect on the assertiveness of MS administrations. Looking at the external factors that can influence member state assertiveness, it is striking that, apart from the economic weight, most of the traditionally discussed power factors such as a state's military weight, population density, or geographic location (centre-periphery question) seem to have relatively little influence. In contrast, the influence of situational variables such as whether a member state holds the Council presidency or the occurrence of a new type of exceptional or crisis situation is surprisingly large. Moreover, the concrete policy sector matters.

Research on Multi-layer Governance and Policy-Making of the EU has strongly focused on the different competences and policy-making regulation. It has been emphasissed, that the EU has different competences in different policies, and that the competences of EU in the field of human public services, i.e. welfare (social and health care) services, education, R&D, cultural services are relatively limited. Even it has been mentioned, that the EU has just limited competences in the field of the protection of the values of EU and influencing the administration of Member States.

This presentation will analyse the role of the EU funds - especially the European Structural and Invetsment (ESI) Funds, but even other funds such Recovery and Resilience Facility etc. - influencing the policies of EU Member States. Because the main recipients of these funds are mainly the new Member States of the EU, therefore, the rules on these funds, and 'soft' regulations on them have a great influence on the development policies of these countries. The conditions defined by the EU regulations on development funds have a great influence even on those policies of these Member States, which are primarily defined as national policies. Thus the influence of the EU policies have been strenghtened by the conditions of these EU development funds, and its influence could be interpreted as a significant one.

The role of the EU Funds have even more influence, and they are consideredd by the EU as an effective tool for another objectives of the EU. This 'soft power' has been strenghtened by the new regulation on ESI Funds, the Regulation (EU) 1060/2021 and by the rules on RRF. The definition of the enabling conditions increased the influence of the EU policies on national policies. The new rules introduced a more complex pattern: because of the horizontal enabling conditions, these Funds became tools for the protection of the values of the EU.

The mechanisms of the influence of this 'soft power' will be examined by the presentation. I will focus on the new Member States of the EU, especially on the cases of Poland and Hungary, because the new regulation has been applied in these cases.

As a result of my research, I would like to emphasise, that the EU Funds offer an effective tool for influencing the national policies of those countries, who are recipients of these subsidies.

The last decades’ various crises have driven discussions about cohesion in Europe, not only in the economic sense but also and particularly so, in the sense of political and social cohesion. In light of the poly-crises situation, polarization and increasing structural imbalances within the EU, and an increase in Eurosceptic sentiments among citizens have been problematized. At the same time, both political practice and academic discourse have referred to the local level, with its closeness to citizens, as a potential starting point for tackling these problems and for strengthening political cohesion, understood as citizens’ relationships with the EU polity (vertical) and with each other as European citizens (horizontal). However, this thesis has not yet been systematically reviewed on a broader scale.

The paper aims to contribute to closing this research gap. It starts from the assumption that municipalities perform multiple roles in the European multilevel system. Municipalities are administrative organisations (they have to implement a large proportion of national and European formal policies), economic (interest) actors (they host different firms, invest in infrastructure and apply for and receive funding from the EU inter alia) as well as social and political spaces. In relation to these roles, local (administrative, political, and civil society) actors’ ideas of ‘Europe’ and ‘Europeanness’ as a basis for the materialisation of political cohesion in Europe can be expected to differ. We argue that the strengthening of political cohesion from the local level up depends on the opportunities of local actors to influence the governance of municipalities’ Europe-related activities and thus become ‘agents of Europe’ in the context of local Europe-related policy-making.

The paper investigates this expectation empirically, on it from two directions. First, it looks into which local actors are part of Europe-related networks and how they are integrated into the political process. Given that the local level enjoys no formal status in the European policy-making process beyond the advisory Committee of Regions and constitutional guarantees of subsidiarity, we expect to find different manifestations of local policy networks, priorities and cooperation models. The aim is to typologize Europe-related local policy networks. Second, the paper investigates local administrations’ ideas about how to address local society. This second direction focuses on discourse and ideas of the role of civil society in the governance of municipalities’ Europe-related activities.

The paper presents fresh empirical data from a current research project. It includes findings from a survey of all German municipalities with at least 20.000 inhabitants about their Europe-related work. Furthermore, it draws on qualitative case studies in eight differently-sized German cities based on 37 expert interviews and document analyses. By combining the different types of empirical material, the paper develops a multi-faceted view of local actors’ Europe-related networking activities, focusing on their interaction with the citizens as well as among each other and stressing their ideas about their respective roles for European cohesion. Based on this, the paper critically discusses the cohesion thesis.