Mainstreaming Europe in local governments

European integration exerts considerable impact on local governments. They have to comply with European law, while the EU allure them with subsidies to act according to European policies. In addition, some local governments and their umbrella organisations try to influence European policy-making. They also participate in transnational municipal networks to enhance their lobbying power or to exchange expertise. Furthermore, local governments seek to promote themselves in the internal market to attract business, investments, tourists, students, expats, or European institutions. In particular since the 1990s, the way local governments adapt to European integration – defined here as Europeanization (cf. Vink and Graziano, 2007) – has been studied, but more recently scholarly attention have been growing (see e.g. Guderjan and Verhelst, 2021; Gröbe et al., 2022). In order to describe the various phases of Europeanization of local governments, scholars often rely on a ladder developed by Peter John, ranging from minimal Europeanization (among other things responding to EU law) to maximal Europeanization (advising the EU on implementation issues). Scholars regularly point out that in practice local governments do not necessarily climb up the consecutive rungs, but jump from one rung to another. Based on large-scale qualitative and quantitative research on the Europeanization of the two tiers of local governments in the Netherlands, municipalities and provinces, this paper presents a typology of local governments’ Europeanization based on phases of mainstreaming (cf. Scott et al., 2021). This typology depicts how local governments’ adaptation to European integration ranges from ad hoc, fragmented and temporary responses to Europe, via initiatives from policy entrepreneurs to put Europe more firmly on the policy agenda, to Europe being a self-evident and integral part of local policy-making. This paper is based on the report written at the request of the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG) and the Brussels House of Dutch Provincies (HNP): H. Vollaard, M. Swinkels, L. Feiters, H. Binnema en L. de Blok (2023), Van ad hoc naar vanzelfsprekend: Hoe Nederlandse gemeenten en provincies inspelen op Europese integratie.