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Being Spain in Brussels: Policy bureaucracy, agenda setting and negotiation in the EU policy process

Maria Martin de Almagro, Scott Greer

Spanish bureaucracy is often said to be marked by poor coordination, poor information and inability to shape political agendas - but analyses of Spanish EU policy regularly present a list of its achievements. We focus on the 'policy bureaucracy' that monitors and acts on dossiers regardless of their political priority, using one EU policy area: health care services policy. For almost the entire EU health care debate, Spain was uncoordinated and invested little in formulating its interests or shaping agendas. Spain's policy bureaucracy fits a country that wins amendments at late stages, but does not engage early to shape policy outside its key priorities.

link: here

This project receives funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 722826.