Organization and nationality in the European Commission services

Existing literature on the internal functioning of the European Commission services indicates that officials' nationality does have an impact on their policy-making behaviour. Students of western national administrations on the other hand, have found the geographical and social backgrounds of officials to be highly insignificant. However, given the unresolved tension between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism in the European Union, this seeming inconsistency may be understandable. In this article, an effort is made to specify some of the organizational and policy-related conditions under which nationality might be particularly important in order to understand decision behaviour. Interview data gathered from 38 Norwegian officials who had been seconded to the Commission are used to make an explorative appraisal of the assumptions put forth.