ABSTRACT
Co-ordinating EU policy-making confronts national governments with numerous and particularly difficult and distinctive problems. This chapter examines the nature of the problems, the apparatus which has been established at both the national and EU level to deal with co-ordinating, and the effectiveness of that apparatus. It argues that member states are acutely aware of co-ordination problems, that different mechanisms have been established to deal with them, and that the effectiveness of those mechanisms differs widely both across the member states and according to the level and issue involved. The chapter also argues that effectiveness cannot be divorced from the ambitions of the member states, and that policy effectiveness does not necessarily flow from co-ordination effectiveness, and weaknesses of co-ordination may be highly functional. Poor national co-ordination may even be functional for the EU itself, since it does facilitate interstate bargaining, whilst policy slippage due to weak implementation co-ordination may be yet another price the Union has to pay for support.
