When Europe hits the Subnational Authorities – The Transposition of EU Directives in Germany between 1990 and 2016

Do the member states of the EU transpose EU directives into their national laws in time and in the complete and correct manner? How can we explain the differences in the policy implementation of EU directives? Previous research points to a variety of factors that help to answer these questions. Federalism is seen as one central factor, which is expected to increase the delay of transposing EU directives in the member states. However, merely a few studies open the ‘black box’ of federalism and analyse what exactly is happening when subnational parliaments and executives are involved. The paper addresses this research gap and takes a closer look at the implementation of EU directives in the sixteen German regional states (‘Länder’). I assess whether the participation of the subnational level contributes to a delayed transposition. Moreover, I investigate whether state-level variables such as ministerial resources and government composition account for variation in transposition delay across the German ‘Länder’. The empirical analysis is based on a novel data set of about 2,000 EU directives in the period from 1990 to 2016 and the corresponding 5,000 national and subnational implementation measures in Germany. The descriptive results show that about one third of all German implementation measures are carried out by the German ‘Länder’. Using an event history approach, I find empirical support that the German ‘Länder’ face a problem of delayed transposition. The results also reveal that – in contrast to the national level – the subnational transposition process is dominated by primary legislation (e.g. laws) via their subnational parliaments.