On the Decentralised Enforcement of EU Law: Variation in Litigation of EU Directives

A major building block of theories about the evolution and operation of the European legal order is the ‘nationalisation’ of EU legal obligations through domestic courts’ and litigants’ decentralised enforcement of EU law. This paper is part of a bigger project scrutinising this mechanism, investigating why some EU directives are litigated while others are not. Drawing on a large-n dataset on litigation in front of national courts (‘EU litigation’) in the EU 15 with and without preliminary references, it provides a cross-sector, cross-country perspectives on variation in litigation. Presenting detailed descriptive information on attributes of legal proceedings (i.e. who litigates in which sector? What part does EU law play in proceedings? Is all litigation ‘enforcement‘?), it contrasts the theoretical assumptions made in the literature with empirical data. Its main purpose is to contribute to theories on ‘governance through EU law’ by putting assumptions made about decentralised enforcement in perspective.