Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 15th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview General Session Author(s) Liudas Mazylis Vytautas Magnus University Kaunas Lithuania Sukyte Zivile, Tirviene Jovita, Liudas Mazylis, Zivile Sukyte, Jovita Tirviene Title Euro-integration and europeanization: challenges for Lithuania's public institutions File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Two sides of the processes caused and stimulated by Lithuania’s EU accession were analyzed: “euro-integration” (representation of the national positions in the European Union institutions), and “Europeanization” (change of national institutional and policy practices). The European Union administration system is a challenge for the European Union newcomers. New EU members are facing difficult exercise – to be involved into a complicated organization, which has no clear distinction between the processes of policy formation and administration. They also have to realize, that the policy of the European Union is not a merely foreign policy. Old member states have to meet challenges connected with enlargement: changes of the processes of the administration and policy formation, brought by the newcomers related to the different historical dimensions of the political and administrative cultures formation process. In Lithuania, correspondingly, two types of the institutions were created on the central level: one, responsible for articulation of “European” positions when negotiating further steps of integration (“integration institutions”); and for implementation of “European” decisions. Though, the institutions themselves are typically called “European”, and both aforementioned functions are inter-related. In this article three spheres of activities are analyzed: agriculture, water protection, and maritime safety as particular cases. The article contains two points of view. One important aspect is “integration” and another – undergoing „European“ impact, which are analyzed in our study. There is the empirical research carried out with the main task to reveal the main changes of the formation of national position and the organization of civil servants’ work in the public institutions responsible for agriculture, water protection, and maritime safety after the accession to the EU. One type of the activities, where innovations are felt the most – participation of the national civil servants in the institutions of the European Union and in their working committees and working groups. But when they work in Brussels and when national coordinating institutions are far away, national civil servants have to be responsible not only for the administrative side of delegation of the national position, but also they must bring new experience to national administrative system. According to the “rationalist” point of view, the misfit between European and domestic processes, policies, and institutions provides societal and/or political actors with new opportunities and constraints to pursue their interests. The process of Europeanization reveals the level of the work organization and management of the central national institutions. There is a necessity to determinate in national law the new procedures of the formation of the national position and also to ascertain, which national institutions are responsible for management and administration of these procedures and which national bodies are responsible for the delegation of the national civil servants. The processes of the Europeanization are felt not only in the central, but also in the regional and self-government levels of national administration system. Decentralizing of administration of particular EU policies within Lithuania down to the bottom level (water protection, milk quotas, direct payments) and benefits and problems of administration, were also analyzed. Situation on both euro-integration and Europeanization structures and processes in the same spheres in a number of other EU-newcomers are compared
