National Governments in the EU Political System

Previous chapters have described how political institutions and the process of government works at the national level in European democracies. For member states of the European Union (EU), this account is incomplete without also considering how governments work together through the EU institutions to produce joint decisions across a broad range of policy areas. This requires an analysis of both how the EU is structured and how decision-making works in practice at the EU level. The current chapter sketches the way in which national governments coordinate at EU level to decide and enact EU legislation which is also national legislation.