Regional MPs' cooperation efforts in EU affairs from a comparative angle

The last decade has witnessed growing attention to the involvement of the so-called 'third level' of governance, i.e. the subnational or regional level, in EU affairs. Research focused e.g. on the emergence of regional offices in Brussels or institutional response to the Lisbon Treaty, which brought along a strengthening of the subnational dimension in multilevel EU governance – at least theoretically. Such institutional changes come along with an increased demand for information on European issues for regional-level political actors. In the context of the new provisions for subsidiarity control, this is also the case for regional MPs, who lack other formal mechanisms for shaping EU policy-making. To tackle this challenge, however, regional MPs can draw on informal ways to get involved in EU affairs. Our paper focuses on regional MPs' EU-related networking activities as one of these ways. Drawing on a survey conducted in seven EU member states, we examine the cooperation efforts maintained by regional MPs with various actors for the purpose of information exchange and influence seeking on EU affairs. We, first provide a descriptive depiction of such contacts: which actors do regional MPs address and for what purpose. Applying cluster analysis methods, we uncover the different strategies that regional MPs tend to follow. Secondly, we seek to explain variation in the use of the various strategies by considering differences in the institutional framework at the national and regional level. Introducing new survey data, our findings contribute to the comparative study of subnational involvement in multilevel EU governance.