ABSTRACT
In chapter 9, Sebastian M. Büttner, Steffen Mau, Lucia Leopold and Katharina Zimmermann analyse the features and obstacles of domestic EU professionals. Starting from field-analytical premises, this chapter examines the variety of EU professionals in local contexts and their role in the course of Europeanisation. The authors outline three major types of professional practices in local contexts (bargaining, executing and communicating EU affairs), which characterise different groups of domestic EU professionals. Major challenges and limitations of the professional intermediation of EU affairs in national and local contexts are also discussed. This contributes to an understanding of why the EU is still widely considered to be alien and dissociated from ordinary citizens, despite the fact that it now extends widely into the Member States.
