The German Länder Representations in Berlin and Brussels. Members of the Same Family or Only Namesakes?

The competences of the German Länder on the national and the supranational level differ. Within Germany, they have important co-decision rights via the Bundesrat. Regarding the European level their formal influence is much smaller. Yet, the Länder have installed Land representations in Berlin and Brussels to represent their interests on the national and the supranational level. This paper asks what representing the interest means in such different institutional settings. Which effects do different formal co-decision rights have? Are the representations on the two levels totally different or is there some kind of family likeness?

Developing and representing “the interest” of one Land government on another level is essentially a coordination process. Coordination is needed vertically between the levels of government, horizontally between the different Länder and internally between the different departments of one Land. However, these processes have rarely been analyzed in depth. By integrating federalism and public administration research, a framework for analyzing coordination procedures between policy sectors and between governments is developed. Analyzing expert interviews conducted with civil servants from the representations in Berlin and Brussels, differences and similarities will be pointed out. It will be demonstrated that even though the coordination activities and partners vary, both representations work as a ‘control center’ in the very heart of government. They are able to identify room for maneuver and strategically assess policy solutions under the point of view of political feasibility and thus essentially contribute to an active role of the German subnational units within the multilevel system.