Europeanization after Lisbon: Competencies, Governance and Domestic Changes in the Context of the new EU Primary Legislation

After many years of efforts to clear classification of EU competencies, these competencies were divided into exclusive, shared and co-ordination by Title I, Articles 2–6 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon. At the same time the areas were delimited where the Union acts and implement joint actions, but its activity must not prevent Member States from implementing their own policies. The classification has a practical significance for defining the scope of the EU and Member States spheres of action, and for application of some more general tools in the integration process – for example, the principle of subsidiarity. It is also beneficial in terms of theoretical knowledge, since it can be used to refine the existing approaches of Europeanization research. The Europeanization research has recently emphasized the link between domestic changes within individual Member States and the modes of governance used by the EU in the implementation of various policies (coercive, competition and cooperation / communication one). In the context of clear classification of policies, introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, governance modes can be accurately attributed to individual policies. Thus, it is now possible to identify better the main mechanisms resulting in changes of domestic policies of the Member States. The identification of the relationships between categories of policies as defined by the Treaty of Lisbon, the modes of governance and key mechanisms of Europeanization is the main aim of the article. But all the same the article tries to describe briefly the situation prior to the Treaty of Lisbon entry into force and highlight the pitfalls