Why Denmark and Belgium Have Different Implementation Records: On Transposition Laggards and Leaders in the EU

Abstract

Statistics of the European Commission show different performances among member states regarding the implementation of European policies. In particular, this article explains why Denmark and Belgium have different records with respect to the legal or administrative transposition of European Union environmental directives. The article starts with a short overview of the implementation problematique and a presentation of the latest available statistics. Then European‐level factors are ruled out as possible explanations for the differences in performance. The author argues, on the contrary, that the differences between Belgium and Denmark must be explained by national institutional contexts. To this end, an institutional approach is presented, which draws attention to ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ institutions as explanatory variables. In total seven categories of variables are discussed: four ‘hard’ categories – the constitutional and administrative context (division of competencies and coordination mechanisms), institutional capacity, administrative and legal adaptation pressure, communication and continuity – and three ‘soft’ categories – institutional jealousy, Europeanisation and political adaptation pressure. It was found that both member states under study have different scores on almost all variables, pointing to rather unfavourable implementation conditions for Belgium and much more favourable conditions for Denmark.

Tidelands Management: Implementation of the Massachusetts Public Waterfront Act

“…In the 1990s, the European Union (EU) acknowledged a significant implementation deficit when it became clear that many states failed to comply with EU-level directives. Research on this subject has focused largely on the implementation of environmental legislation by individual countries (Bursens, 2002;Jordan, 1999;Lampinen & Uusikyla, 1998;Mastenbroek, 2005). Literature from both these periods can shed some light on how best to serve the goals of the WRP and improve implementation.…”

“…Bursens (2002) refers to problems of clarity and consistency that hamper the transposition of the EU-level directives into country-level programs. On the one hand, there is a high degree of technicality in the directives and the requirement for consistency across member states.…”

“…On the one hand, there is a high degree of technicality in the directives and the requirement for consistency across member states. On the other hand, like site-specific regulated entities, each country has its own institutional conditions that require adaptability (Bursens, 2002;Mastenbroek, 2005).…”

EU “Mobility” Partnerships: An Initial Assessment of Implementation Dynamics

“…Bursens, 2002;Hartlapp, 2007;Skjaerseth & Wettestad, 2008). This is problematic for EU external migration policy for two main reasons: firstly, EU external migration policy is not based on legislation, and little of it is legally-binding (apart from readmission and visa facilitation agreements, which are international agreements).…”

Mass production of law. routinization in the transposition of European directives: a sociological- institutionalist account

“…Most studies on compliance with European Community (EC) law, in which quantitative data are presented, use two types of data from the European Commission, namely data on infringement proceedings or Commission scoreboard data on transposition progress (e.g. Haas 1998;Lampinen and Uusikylä 1998;Bursens 2002). However, as these data have many shortcomings, it is not sufficient to assess the alleged transposition deficit (Mastenbroek 2005b).…”