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

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.