1 The Impact of ‘Soft-Europeanization’ on Multi-Level Governance and Domestic Balances of Power

Some authors argue that the process of European Integration and its effect on Member States empowered domestic sub-national levels of government. Others posit that Europeanization strengthens the national governments because they are the key players in the process of integration. These types of studies focus on the effect of legally bindingness agreements on domestic settings. Nowadays, the European Union increasingly creates a set of non-bindingness regulations, or what is referred as soft law, with the end of guiding component states and achieving a set of goals. Given that these schools of thought do not address the issue of ‘bindingness, I ask-- what is the effect of soft law on domestic territorial configurations? Does soft Europeanization affect domestic balances power in MSs? If so, how and why? This paper seeks to answer the former questions by studying the case of the European Employment Strategy. I suggest that non-binding instruments built on collaborative mechanisms do informally affect the balance of power between national and sub-national levels. Nevertheless, we should not expect to observe the same type of outcome (e.g., weakening or strengthening of national governments) across member States because the effect of soft law on domestic balances of power is mediated by the configuration of domestic institutions. Mainly, this paper seeks to expand the debate on the multilevel governance by directly addressing whethe