404 research outputs found
The First EU Social Partner Agreement in Practice: Parental Leave in the 15 Member States. IHS Political Science Series: 2004, No. 96
No full textIn this paper, we analyze the impact of one specific EU social policy measure, the Parental Leave Directive. This Directive is based on the first Euro-collective agreement, concluded in November 1995 by the ETUC, UNICE and CEEP. Contrary to the rather sceptical assessments presented by many observers at the time of its adoption, our in-depth analysis of the Directive's implementation in all 15 member states reveals rather far-reaching effects. The Directive induced significant policy reforms in the majority of member states and thus facilitated the reconciliation of work and family life for many working parents. These effects were not only brought about by compliance with the compulsory minimum standards of the Directive, but also by a considerable number of voluntary reforms. We argue that domestic party politics and processes of policy learning may explain the occurrence of these "unforced" changes, which have hitherto received little attention by Europeanisation scholars
In Search of the Worlds of Compliance: Promises and Pitfalls of Quantitative Testing. IHS Political Science Series Paper No. 113, July 2007
No full textThe “worlds of compliance” typology as developed by Falkner/Treib/Hartlapp/Leiber (2005) builds on ideal-typical procedural modes of domestic adaptation to EU directives. Recently, the Journal of European Public Policy (JEPP) has published an interesting article discussing this concept. At closer inspection, the analysis presented by Dimiter Toshkov results in some support for, but also some criticism of, the worlds of compliance. His statistics-based approach gives us the opportunity to raise several issues of crucial importance for the entire scholarly community in the field of EU implementation research. Among these are the problem of choosing adequate indicators, of using reliable quantitative data, and of appropriately applying domestic politics approaches and veto player theory. These discussions are of general interest also for a very practical reason: similar methodological choices are rather common in current European integration research
Interest Groups in a Multi-level Polity: The Impact of European Integration on National Systems
No full textinstitutionalisation; Europeanization; multilevel governance; Nation-state
Making Dead Letters Live: Strategies to Improve the Effectiveness of EU Legislation in Central and Eastern Europe
No full textAs many empirical studies have shown, non-compliance with EU legislation has already been a significant phenomenon within the EU15. With the accession of twelve new Member States since 2004, all of which had to align their legal and administrative systems to the acquis communautaire within a very short time frame, the compliance issue has become even more pressing. Against this background, it is the aim of this paper to take a closer look at how four new Member States from Central and Eastern Europe fare in implementing EU legislation and how possible compliance problems could be remedied in the future. The paper presents findings from a comparative project on the transposition, enforcement and application of EU legislation from the fields of working time and equal treatment in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. The results show that while transposition performance is relatively good, all four countries are marked by significant problems in application and enforcement. On the basis of intense focus group sessions involving practitioners from the four countries, the paper presents a set of strategies to improve the current state of affairs and concludes with some remarks on the chances for these options to be actually put into practice in the new Member States
Social Policy:Problem Solving Gaps, Partial Exits and Court-Decision Traps
No full textNotwithstanding some persistent, and likely irresolvable, problem-solving gaps, Social Europe has escaped the joint-decision trap on a regular basis. Most importantly, Treaty base games and arena shifting helped to bring about more secondary law and ECJ-driven political decisions than might have been expected considering the decision rules. Furthermore, progressive steps in European social integration were induced by a 'court-decision trap'. Two examples are studied in depth: health care, and the integration and eventual exportability of social minimum benefits. Indeed, relevant integration was deepened significantly although neither the founding persons of the Treaties nor the governments were willing to create a cross-border market for health care or open social assistance related benefits for exportability.</p
Interlinking neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism: Sidelining governments and manipulating policy preferences as "passerelles"
No full textThe EU's founding fathers had the protection of the EU's constituent units as a key concern and set up serious hurdles to policy innovation in the absence of unanimous governmental agreement. These institutional design features, aptly characterised as "joint-decision trap" by Fritz W. Scharpf, were only softened but not erased over time. Nonetheless, the problem of how to innovate has, at times, been overcome through eclectic means. There are indeed some well known and quite visible practices as well as some less expected and more obscure strategies that have propelled the EU's policy system beyond what has for a long time been expected. This paper argues that there are two strategic moves the European Commission (and, at times, other supranational actors such as the European Court of Justice) can use to actively overcome member state opposition: first, sidelining some or even all national governments; and, second, manipulating relevant policy preferences. These two basic strategies can be seen to interconnect the diverging basic assumptions of intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism as 'passerelles'.political science; joint decision making; unanimity; integration theory; intergovernmentalism; neo-functionalism
Problems of operationalization and data in EU compliance research
No full textSubstantial theoretical, conceptual and empirical advances have been made in research on the implementation of EU policies during recent years. However, our findings have remained ambivalent and our theoretical insights disparate. It therefore seems high time to address some issues that cause concern in this type of research and to raise awareness of the limits of the various theoretical approaches and of the data commonly used. This relates to the challenges of operationalising and of choosing adequate indicators for the dependent variable (compliance). We also discuss promises and pitfalls of different types of data used in the field, such as official statistics on notifications and infringements published by the European Commission as well as mass surveys. -- Die EU-Implementationsforschung hat in den letzten Jahren wesentliche theoretische, konzeptuelle und empirische Fortschritte gemacht. Die Ergebnisse sind jedoch ambivalent und unsere theoretischen Erkenntnisse noch immer disparat. Es scheint deshalb an der Zeit einige Problemfelder dieses Forschungszweigs zu benennen und die Sensibilität für die Reichweite verschiedener methodischer Ansätze und Arten von Daten zu vergrößern. Dies gilt für die Operationalisierung der Kernkonzepte und für die Wahl angemessener Indikatoren, um die abhängige Variable (Rechtsbefolgung) zu erklären. Darüber hinaus diskutieren wir die Vor- und Nachteile der verschiedenen Arten von Daten, die von den meisten Studien genutzt werden. Es handelt sich um offizielle Statistiken über Notifizierungen und Vertragsverletzungsverfahren, die die EU Kommission veröffentlicht, und um Umfragedaten.
Opposition through the Backdoor? The Case of National Non-Compliance with EU Directives. IHS Political Science Series: 2002, No. 83
No full textScholars of European Integration have recently shown increasing interest in the implementation phase of the EU policy cycle, particularly in the extent of, and the reasons for, national non-compliance with European rules. According to an intergovernmentalist perspective, implementation problems should only occur when member states failed to assert their interests in the European decision-making process. Focusing on 23 infringement procedures from the area of labour law, we show that such "opposition through the backdoor" does indeed occur occasionally. However, we demonstrate that opposition at the "rear end" of the EU policy process may also arise without prior opposition at the "front end". Our findings indicate that national non-compliance may also be due to administrative shortcomings, interpretation problems, and issue linkage
Gerda L. Schulman Collection 1938-1993
No full textThis collection consists of two folders: one containing Gerda Schulman's Austrian Heritage Collection questionnaire with biographical details of her experience in Vienna before the Anschluss and subsequent immigration, as well as degrees and professional certificates. The second folder contains publications by Gerda Schulman from her professional career as a psychologist. The second folder also includes a letter from 1938, originally published in the book "Thomas Mann Letters".digitizedGerda Schulman (née Lang) was born 1915 in Vienna, Austria. She finished her law studies at the University of Vienna just a few weeks before the Anschluss in March of 1938. She and her Dutch husband, Hans fled to Amsterdam, and they immigrated to the U.S. in 1939 where she started her studies in psychology. She eventually became a family therapist and a published author of scientific works.Itemized list of collection in folder 1Austrian Heritage CollectionProcessed for digitizatio
Three Worlds of Compliance or Four? The EU15 Compared to New Member States. IHS Political Science Series Paper, No. 112, March 2007
No full textStarting from the findings of an earlier compliance study covering the fifteen ‘old’ member states of the European Union, which identified three ‘worlds of compliance’, this paper seeks to establish whether or not the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) represent a separate world of compliance. We present empirical findings from a research project on the implementation of three EU Directives from the field of working time and equal treatment in four CEE countries. The evidence suggests that the new member states display implementation styles that are similar to a few countries in the EU15. The expectation that the new member states might behave according to their own specific logic, such as significantly decreasing their compliance efforts after accession in order to take ‘revenge’ for the strong pressure of conditionality, is not supported by our case studies. Instead, all four new member states appear to fall within a group that could be dubbed the ‘world of dead letters’. It is crucial to highlight, however, that this specific ‘world of compliance’, characterised by politicised transposition processes and systematic application and enforcement problems, also includes two countries from the EU15
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