Non-Compliance with EU Directives in the Member States: Opposition through the Backdoor?

Falkner, Gerda; Hartlapp, Miriam; Leiber, Simone; Treib, Oliver

doi:10.1080/0140238042000228095

Cited by 119 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…The results illustrate that, in the case of Austria, it is not a common political practice to express an oppositional stance towards a directive by neglecting to implement it. The outcome confirms previous studies that identify only rare incidents of this phenomenon (Falkner et al 2004;Linos 2007). Factors such as changes in government, issue linkage, administrative difficulties, and legal misinterpretation were responsible for improper implementation.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

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Member states’ opposition in the Council of the European Union and its impacts on the implementation of directives

Pircher

2017

ozp

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In the Council of the European Union (EU), a qualified majority is mostly required to adopt legislative acts. Based on this majority rule, individual member states can be outvoted and are subsequently obliged to implement the law. This article analyses whether opposition in the Council of the EU affects the transposition of directives into national law by using the example of Austria from 2000 to 2008. The results demonstrate that domestic factors, rather than a negative political attitude, were responsible for delays and procedures when implementing previously contested directives. However, the effects of opposition in the Council on implementation were particularly apparent in cases where there was a high degree of misfit between EU provisions and the domestic legal structure. Keywords SchlüsselwörterEuropäische Union, Rat der EU, oppositionelles Wahlverhalten, Österreich, Implementation von Richtlinien, rechtlicher Misfit Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere thanks to all the interview partners for their time and the information they provided. This article presents the findings of a dissertation project conducted at the University of Vienna. I am grateful to my supervisor, Gerda Falkner, and my two reviewers and examiners, Heinrich Neisser and Andrea Lenschow, for their valuable comments and reviews in the process of completing the project. I would also like to thank the former members of the Institute for European Integration Research for their useful comments on an earlier version of this paper.The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

“…In a multi-level system, where decisions must be implemented and applied at the member-state level, consensus might foster a timely and compliant implementation of EU law, and outvoted member states may tend to oppose 'through the backdoor' by impeding implementation (Falkner et al 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Member states’ opposition in the Council of the European Union and its impacts on the implementation of directives

Pircher

2017

ozp

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“…Similar to adjusted R-squared, these information criteria assess the goodness of fit by assessing the explanatory power of non-linear models with reference to their loglikelihood, adjusting for the fact that models with more explanatory variables will usually 114 Using the log of per capita income makes no difference 115 Bursens 2002;Falkner et al 2004 fit the data better. The criteria differ in the extent to which they penalize model to account for some of the unexplained variations in compliance with environmental directives 129 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing Multilateral Environmental Agreements: An Analysis of EU Directives

Perkins¹,

Neumayer²

2007

Global Environmental Politics

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While a number of different theoretical models have been advanced to explain why states implement-or, indeed, do not implement-multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), very little empirical work has been undertaken to validate their predictions. With a view to narrowing this gap, the present article adopts a large-N, econometric approach to test the explanatory power of four distinct models of compliance-domestic adjustment, reputational, constructivist and managerial-in the context of European Union (EU) environmental policy. Using data on the number of ofıcial infringements received by 15 member states for non-implementation of environmental directives over the period 1979-2000, we ınd that all four models make a statistically signiıcant contribution to explaining spatio-temporal differences in legal implementation. Thus, our results suggest that the implementation of MEAs is shaped by a combination of rational calculations of domestic compliance costs and reputational damage, domestically institutionalized normative obligations, and legal and political constraints. We conclude by suggesting a greater need for multi-causal theoretical models of supranational legal compliance. (c) 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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“…They are instead more likely to continue to regard domestic law as the prime locus of regulatory authority (Falkner et al, 2004). In fact, precisely for this reason it should be easier for political and bureaucratic actors in countries that are less economically integrated into the EU to ignore European Directives.…”

Section: Economic Benefits: Intra-eu Tradementioning

confidence: 99%

Do Membership Benefits Buy Regulatory Compliance?

Perkins

Neumayer

2007

European Union Politics

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International audienceUnderlying several theories of European integration is the idea that countries' willingness to sign up to supranational rules is dependent on the expectation and/or realization of various benefits. In this paper, we explore whether such benefits also affect member states' implementation of these rules. Using econometric techniques, we estimate the influence of several measures of membership benefits on the annual number of legal infringements received by 15 member states over the period from 1978 to 1999. Our results provide qualified support for the idea that benefits positively influence compliance. We find that greater intra-EU trade dependence and voting power in European institutions relative to population size are negatively associated with legal infringements. Yet, contrary to a priori expectations, net fiscal transfers are positively correlated with infringements

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Non-Compliance with EU Directives in the Member States: Opposition through the Backdoor?

Cited by 119 publications

References 22 publications

Member states’ opposition in the Council of the European Union and its impacts on the implementation of directives

Member states’ opposition in the Council of the European Union and its impacts on the implementation of directives

Implementing Multilateral Environmental Agreements: An Analysis of EU Directives

Do Membership Benefits Buy Regulatory Compliance?

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