Compliance under Controversy: Analysis of the Transposition of European Directives and their Provisions

This dissertation combines four empirical studies on member states’ legal compliance with the European Union (EU) directives and their provisions. The studies address two main objectives. First, they aim to explain timely and correct compliance as a function of member states’ attributes to specific EU policy requirements. The second objective is to account for the ‘missing link’ between EU decision-making and national implementation. In addition, this dissertation also seeks to improve our understanding of member states’ level of compliance with the EU requirements. Thus, the following questions are also addressed: How can we measure member states’ compliance with regard to EU directives and directives’ provisions? and Are there differences in member states’ performance with regard to different types of compliance problems, such as transposition delay, infringement procedures and, the correct transposition of directives’ provisions? The theoretical answers to the explanatory research questions are based on the core assumption that both the willingness and the capacity of member states to comply with different EU requirements are a function of member states’ cost-benefit considerations regarding the implementation of particular EU directives and directives’ provisions in domestic systems. This study combines two main theoretical approaches to explain member states’ compliance with particular directives and directives’ provisions: enforcement and management. Whereas enforcement stresses the importance of the benefits and the costs of non-compliance (e.g. alternative priorities, incentives to deviate, fear of sanctions), the management approach focuses on the costs of compliance (e.g. capacity limitations, costs of domestic adjustment to required changes, and rule ambiguity) as main explanations for member states’ failure to meet the EU requirements (Chayes and Chayes, 1993; Downs et al., 1999; Fearon, 1998; Tallberg, 2003). Hypotheses are derived on the influence of member states’ incentives to deviate from particular EU decision outcomes, the level of conflict between member states during the EU decision-making process, Commission monitoring and enforcement and the level of compatibility between EU policy requirements and existing domestic law (‘technical fit’). To test hypotheses, this dissertation combines a data set on the policy preferences supported by national delegates during the EU decision-making process with information on a country’s timely and correct implementation of specific directives’ provisions. The findings provide new insights regarding member states’ compliance with controversial EU directives and their provisions.