Queens Papers on Europeanization No. 2/2000 Policy Transfer and Europeanization: Passing the Heineken Test?

This paper examines the link between policy transfer and Europeanization. Both concepts have recently become common currency in studies of European policy-making, but the relationship between them has remained mostly unexplored. Here, we explore how and why policy transfer has recently become a more prominent methodology for making European Union (EU) policy, and assess the implications of this shift in EU policy-making for Europeanization as a broader political process. Our central argument is that while policy transfer is increasingly presented as the more acceptable face of Europeanization, the nature of the process raises important and, thus far, unanswered questions concerning the legitimacy of a kind of Europeanization by stealth