The debate over whether the EU should speed up its decision-making, curb the use of vetoes, and strengthen its institutional machinery is far from new. What is newer is the technological dimension of that gap. As the EU’s institutions experiment with AI tools to manage their growing workload, many national capitals are struggling to do the same.
Yet there is rarely any serious discussion of whether individual member states are keeping pace with the EU’s accelerating legislative speed, or whether they can effectively project their national positions. While the European Commission is reportedly weighing whether to station officials in member state capitals to strengthen its local influence and policy awareness, member states are not doing the equivalent when it comes to their own representation in Brussels.
Struggling Between Institutions
Size is not everything. Some smaller member states punch above their weight despite leaner bureaucracies. But most face a range of problems rooted in an outdated approach to EU affairs.
The difficulties span a shortage of manpower, trouble hiring and retaining talent, weak coordination between Permanent Representations and home capitals, the absence of a joined-up approach to EU policy at ministerial level, and a failure to adopt new technology when budgetary or political constraints rule out hiring more people. The result is that some member states behave as observers and reactors rather than active participants in the legislative process. For these countries, helping to shape the EU’s agenda proactively is simply out of reach.
As the conversation about the Single Market and a more pragmatic EU federation gains ground, member states, especially smaller ones, would do well to follow the best practices of their more effective peers and even of the EU institutions, and to reinforce their representation in policy matters.
What Is at Stake
National government representatives sit on roughly 140 committees and working parties in Brussels, covering policy that touches their economies, industries, and citizens. As the pace of lawmaking quickens, the methods that worked in the past may no longer fit the present or the future.
The exact size and remit of countries’ Permanent Representations are notoriously hard to track, but a 2019 report by the Danish think tank Europa found staffing ranged from 69 to 200 representatives depending on the member state. Western European countries such as Germany, France, Belgium, and Austria led the field with 150 to 200 employees. A middle group, including Romania, which chaired the Council at the time, along with the UK, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Czechia, Finland, and Ireland, had between 103 and 147. A third group, made up mostly of smaller or Eastern European states such as Lithuania, Portugal, Hungary, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Cyprus, Slovenia, and Latvia, had only 69 to 89, two to three times fewer than their Western counterparts.
Size does not equal quality, but underrepresented countries often struggle to make a meaningful mark on EU affairs. The manpower deficit becomes most visible during their Council presidencies, when hiring outside talent is difficult and core teams are stretched thin.
Uneven Stakeholder Ecosystems Across the EU
In democracies, policymakers’ agendas are naturally shaped by voters, who are in turn represented by industry groups, individual experts, thought leaders, and the non-governmental sector. But in member states with limited ecosystems, the link between EU policy and these stakeholders is weak.
As a result, policymakers rarely receive timely, constructive feedback when they most need it, leaving them to decide on the basis of inter-institutional dialogue alone or limited contact with a handful of proactive stakeholders. Smaller member states suffer the most. Their industries are smaller, domestic trade groups often have to operate as broad “big tent” organisations to survive, which limits their specialisation, and their smaller media sectors lack the capacity to cover EU affairs in depth and in context.
The quality of public debate on EU policy in smaller member states is poor, delayed at best and absent at worst. Very often, public discussion of EU legislation only begins during the transposition phase, when little can still be changed. The debate then stays superficial, caught between glossy official press releases and a defeatist, overly critical tone.
Following the EU’s and Ireland’s Consultation Models
The EU’s own stakeholder consultation mechanisms, such as the “Have Your Say” platform, attract their share of criticism, but they remain inclusive and transparent models worth replicating at the national level. Ireland has already done so through open and transparent public consultation systems, inviting stakeholders to share views not only on the country’s EU presidency priorities but also on specific legislative files at the centre of debate, such as its recent call for feedback on the EU’s Digital Networks Act.
Some worry that national public sectors could not manage diverging opinions and that the result would be chaos. But the traditional tools most countries rely on, such as roundtables and ad hoc meetings, are clearly no longer effective. Building new frameworks that let all interested parties, however polarised, voice their views publicly on EU matters would improve transparency, sharpen policymaker accountability, build trust in local and EU institutions alike, and boost overall engagement with EU affairs.
What Is Possible Beyond More Staff
The argument that bureaucracies are already too large is hard to dismiss, especially in countries with an austere approach to public spending and debt. Even so, EU affairs is not the place to cut costs, particularly as the bloc moves toward a more integrated Single Market with harmonised rules and fewer Directives, which once gave countries some flexibility to reflect local needs. The sheer scale of staffing within the EU institutions should be argument enough for finance ministries and sceptics to grasp that EU lawmaking is vast, complex, and demands real investment to take part in constructively.
Yet more money for staff or new consultation platforms are no silver bullets. Other challenges, such as weak horizontal coordination between ministries, difficulty retaining institutional memory, and chronic time pressure, can also be tackled through technology, from custom-built AI solutions, a real opportunity for European tech, to other tools. More importantly, the very act of building these tools, gathering the relevant data, and mapping administrative structures will push countries to rethink how they handle EU affairs.
The Commission’s recent Communication on better regulation sets out plans to introduce new IT tools to improve lawmaking, with the institution reportedly aiming to become “AI-ready.” Estonia, meanwhile, is prioritising the use of AI across its public sector at the highest political level. Both the EU institutions and some member states appear to have grasped a simple point: if AI improves productivity and saves time in the private sector, it should do the same in the public sector, whether at home or in Brussels.
