Enabling Free Movement but Restricting Domestic Policy Space? The Price of Mutual Recognition

Free movement within the EU is guaranteed via mutual recognition – a principle stipulating that any product lawfully produced in one country must also be accepted in another country. While unleashing the economic benefits from trade without regulatory barriers, mutual recognition potentially restricts the policy space of member states to adress legitimate societal concern due to real or perceived risks of relocation. Evidence for this hypothesis is mixed, however. The welfare of farm animals is becoming an increasingly relevant societal concern, yet no research has studied the impact of mutual recognition on this process standard. The author addresses this research gap and examines the effect of the internal market rules of the EU on German farm animal welfare standards over the past three decades. An argumentative policy analysis of all relevant federal policy documents is combined with 20 elite interviews. The findings demonstrate how the argument of inner-European competition impeded progress towards stricter animal welfare standards. The results suggest that under more enabling rules farm animal welfare standards in Germany would have been raised faster. The findings contribute to the more general issue of national sustainability standards in a globalised world where legitimate collective preferences increasingly collide with economic goals.