This paper makes a contribution to the study of regulatory governance within the EU by studying the mechanism of decentralised enforcement of European law before member state courts. More specifically, it analyses whether the complexity and rights-dimension of EU directives affect their likelihood of becoming invoked in legal proceedings before national courts in the EU 15. Scholars assert that the European Commission and the European Court of Justice are furnishing legislation with individual rights and increasing their complexity to incentivise individuals to monitor member states’ compliance with EU norms. Conducting a logistic regression analysis of whether or not 168 directives were invoked in each of the EU 15 member states between 1985 and 2013 this paper finds tentative support for the assumptions made in the literature. The analysis indicates that more rights-bearing and complex EU directives are more likely to be invoked before a greater number of member state courts.
