SPANISH COORDINATION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION THE …西班牙在欧洲联盟协调….docVIP

SPANISH COORDINATION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: THE CASE OF THE HABITATS DIRECTIVE. Susana Aguilar Fernández (Complutense University, Madrid) C/ Gargaliga no 11, Urbanización El Bosque Villaviciosa de Odón, 28670 Madrid. SPAIN Tel. (work): 34-1-3942945 Tel. (home): 34-1-6044738 Fax: 34-1-3942767 E-mail: susana@ceacs.march.es ABSTRACT Spain’s successful negotiation of the habitats directive can be explained by the political salience of this particular issue (the priority attached to the strategy whereby the EU had to be convinced of the need to link environmental protection to the provision of special funds) and by the nature of the domestic political system, characterized by its powerful and autonomous executive as well as by the non-cooperative system of interest-intermediation. Above all, the triumph of the Spanish strategy is due to the ability of succesive heads of government to tightly control leading EU issues by not allowing a highly departmentalized state administration as well as the regional governments to be too closely involved in Community negotiations. The absence of formal mechanisms which would allow contending interest groups to partake in the decision process, thereby reducing time-consuming procedures and administrative costs, must also be taken into account. As a result, Europeanisation, understood as a process involving the convergence of political structures and policy styles, has scarcely made any progress in Spain. Introduction. This paper begins by presenting a seemingly paradoxical situation: On the one hand, deficient administrative coordination and the dispersion of powers have been repeatedly identified by the European Commission as the main causes of the environmental deficit in Spain; on the other hand, the Spanish administration (and its Euro-bureaucrats) is perceived as a rather skilful negotiator on the Community stage which sometimes manages to change Brussels’ bills to its own advantage. One of the most recent and widely publicized