Compliance with European Union Law

Abstract

This panel addresses issues regarding compliance with EU law. The EU is an organization of laws, all of which must be complied with correctly. Without a bureaucracy of its own to carry out implementation, it relies on each member state to do this job. Yet compliance is not always forthcoming. Recent research has sought to explain why non-compliance occurs but this has tended to only focus on non-compliance as the relative lateness in transposing Directives. The aim of the panel is to go beyond the previous trend of focusing on cross-country comparisons on transposition. Looking beyond these aspects can help us get a fuller picture of the complexities of compliance in a multi-level context. To begin with, sub-national units are responsible for a large proportion of implementation, yet we know little about their role in compliance with EU law. To what extent are they responsible for non-compliance? Secondly, transposition is only one stage in the policy implementation process. What happens beyond legal transposition? Are the policies being correctly implemented at street-level? Thirdly, directives are only one out of several policy instruments. Much less is known regarding compliance with the others. For example, to what extent are there compliance problems with the growing body of soft law? Finally, once non-compliance has been identified it must be translated into compliance. This raises the question of how effective the EU enforcement mechanisms are in settling cases of non-compliance, once they have been observed. What factors are likley to facilitate quick resolution? This panel will bring together scholars who through a variety of different approaches address these and similar questions.

Title	Details
Beyond the Member State: Sub-National Compliance with European Union Legislation	View Paper Details
The rise of voluntary dispute resolution and policy enforcement in the EU	View Paper Details
Complying with soft law instruments: the case of the European Charter for Research and Code of Conduct for their Recruitment	View Paper Details
Complying with EU Anti-Discrimination Law: the case of Roma children and segregation in schooling settings	View Paper Details
Compliance with Basic Civil Liberties in the EU: A Cross-National Comparison	View Paper Details