In this chapter, focus is on new forms of administrative arrangements in the EU. Increasingly, national administrative institutions interact with counterparts at the EU level. At the same time, we see a trend of administrative decentralization at the national level, where more tasks and functions are delegated to quasi-autonomous agencies. Due to their relative independence from national ministries, these agencies may be well placed, organizationally speaking, to act as local agents of a Community administration.
Such a development, indicating a possible transformation of national governments in Europe, can only be studied with a focus on the interactions between the European and the national levels. Here, the case of EU competition policy is explored to see whether a networked-administrative system is more than a theoretical construction.
This paper was published in 2006 as a book chapter in M. Egeberg (ed.) The Multilevel Union Administration, Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan.