99

This paper is the second part of the analysis of the European bureaucratic field developed above in this special issue. In the first part, we sought to better explain the concept of the bureaucratic field on a theoretical level as well as the new perspectives it opens up for studying the European institutions. Beyond its immediate contribution to shedding light on the profile of key institutional actors, the sociology of the field of eurocracy treats the European institutions as a space of human as well as institutional relations. In doing so, it highlights a set of sociological structures that act as a condition for the very concrete practices and relations of cooperation and authority within the administrative-political compromise-making machine that are the institutions and the broader “milieu” they represent. We have also provided some methodological clarifications and limitations that are useful for making this analytical grid work in conjunction with others. In this second part, we will not develop the consequences for the analysis of singular European public policies whose space is to be constructed on a case-by-case basis (on these aspects, see Ponte et al., 2017; Bigo, 2018; Roger, 2020; Georgakakis, 2022). We will focus on what this reading grid tells us about the medium-term and more recent transformations of the European administrative field in its generic form and especially from its Brussels centre.