Implementing the European Pillar of Social Rights: Regulatory tensions as driver for differentiated policy implementation

This article studies the implementation plans and the early transposition of the Work-Life-Balance directive in five member states, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland and Poland. We examine how these countries react to EU-induced reform requirements resulting from the European Pillar of Social Rights. These countries took a prominent role in watering down the directive at EU level and they further present different institutional arrangements concerning parental leave. Moreover, they cover different cultures or traditions of implementing EU law. We demonstrate that specific regulatory tensions that we derive from Europeanisation, welfare state and feminist literature, impact member states’ implementation plans. These tensions are i) EU-national subsidiarity, so the question on which level of governance the competencies should lie, ii) the costs, which is referred to both the adaptational costs and additional costs emerging from the new provisions and iii) degenderization, meaning the promotion of gender equality. Our findings demonstrate that these regulatory tensions are translated into domestic politics and impact the implementation plans. This results in differentiated policy implementation, potentially undermining the EU’s aim to upward social convergence. Thus, the policy outcome, that is the uptake of these rights, may greatly differ among the member states and increase inequality among them.