Mittelbare Europapolitik im Bundesland Kärnten

The aim of this thesis was to investigate which domestic influence structures official representatives of the Land Carinthia use to bring sub-national interests (with a European Dimension) into the Inner Austrian EU decision-making process. Due to the involvement of many different protagonists in the national EU decision-making process, first and foremost concern was to find out, whether the official representatives of Carinthia use influence structures of other national actors in addition to the explicitly guaranteed (formal legal) participation opportunities as part of the procedure of participation of Austrian Länder. In addition to the multi-level governance approach, theoretical base of this work is in particular the concept of sub-national influence. To be able to answer the research question, first the Inner Austrian EU decision-making process and the actors involved were illustrated on the basis of the existing primary and secondary liter-ature. Afterwards expert's interviews were held with members of the Carinthian government or their representing employees. The research showed that all official representatives of the Land Carinthia use many different influence structures in EU matters and therefore cooperate with a variety of domestic actors to bring or support sub-national interests in the Inner Austrian EU decision-making process.