Conflict and cooperation in EU policy‐making: The case of Catalonia

Abstract

This article examines how European integration has altered territorial relations in one member state, Spain, and how the EU has increasingly become a domestic issue in Spanish territorial politics. It examines the case of Catalonia and how greater participation for Spain's autonomous communities in EU decision‐making has become an important political issue within the Catalan political sphere with a greater number of Catalan political parties increasingly viewing the process of European integration as one in which Europe's regions are ‘losing out’. In particular, the issue has moved away from primarily being a concern for Catalan nationalist parties to one in which non‐nationalist parties have taken a growing interest. The article analyses how the issue of direct representation of the autonomous communities in EU institutions has gradually become a divisive issue amongst Spanish and Catalan political parties and how this reflects many of the unresolved issues that have emerged from Spain's continuing process of devolution. Finally, the article argues that growing overlap in regional, state and EU spheres of authority has merely served to reinforce the conflictual nature of intergovernmental relations within Spain.