Die Folgen der europäischen Integration für Deutschland: Wandel durch Verflechtung

Abstract What are the consequences of European integration for the member states? In this essay, I would like to show how the integration has changed the institutional options for action open to national actors. I start by looking at the German political system, which tends to bottleneck reform through multifarious constraints on negotiation. This becomes evident in the examples discussed here concerning the regulations governing both the insurance business and truck transportation, regulations that for decades remained fairly constant. Even though the existing regulations came increasingly under fire, reform was blocked by regulated businesses interested in maintaining the status quo, their trade associations, and the responsible governmental agencies. I will show how integration into the European multilevel system can be strategically used by national actors to implement reforms for which the necessary consensus on the national level would not exist without EU membership. When one analyzes the consequences of integration not only as the one-sided pressure on member states but also includes the reactions of national actors, it becomes clear how the impact of the EU is also affected to a great degree by national interests.