It has often been argued that one should expect EU policy-making in areas of high political sensitivity, to follow a ‘conservative’ logic that is unlikely to lead to significantly higher (more costly) regulatory standards. In such areas, sovereignty-conscious national governments are expected to be reluctant to adopt common EU standards that are significantly higher than those that are already in place domestically, as these would require costly domestic adaptation. Instead the expectation is that states will agree on minimum standards that will minimisethe need for domestic adaptation or even the use the EU level to escape domestic constraints to adopt lower (less costly) standards. However, empirically, one can find numerous examples of the EU adopting standards that are higher than those existing in some Member States. This paper seeks to provide a better understanding for this phenomenon. It develops several hypothesis based on rational institutionalist bargaining accounts that we expect to be highly effective in explaining why less powerful accept higher EU standards. We complement these bargaining accounts with hypotheses that are based on historical- and norm-based institutionalist approaches which appear to be better suited to explain why even the most powerful EU Member States accept EU standards that are significantly higher than their own. The paper uses examples from the field of EU asylum and refugee policy to illustrate and support its claims.
