A perennial debate in European integration literature revolves around whether the EU moves towards an ‘ever closer union’. Is the EU becoming more intergovernmental or more supranational? The Lisbon treaty by no means ends this debate. Lisbon’s origin – the ‘constitution’ – was destined to make the EU more supranational but everyday impressions suggest that the EU becomes rapidly more intergovernmental. This confirms the alleged trend in integration theories. Before drawing conclusions, the subtleties of the interplay between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism need to be revisited and specified. Building on public administration insights, we argue that intergovernmentalism and supranationalism are not opposite ends of a scale as often noted in the literature but are a precondition for one another: without intergovernmentalism no supranationalism and vice versa. Intergovernmentalism and supranationalism are probably better presented as a concept instead of a scale. This opens an administrative research agenda focusing on the shop-floor (micro-level) of policies in the EU’s multilevel system.