Complying with Europe: EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States
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Book Review
Complying with Europe: EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States Gerda Falkner, Oliver Treib, Miriam Hartlapp and Simone Leiber Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, xiv þ 404pp. ISBN: 0-521-84994-2 (Hardback, US$75.00); ISBN: 0-521-61513-5 (Paperback, US$34.99). Acta Politica (2007) 42, 103–106. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500175
One important debate within the European integration literature concerns the question whether the large number of liberalizing measures that have served to open up the European markets are counterbalanced by social policy measures establishing rights that apply across the European Union (EU). The fact that such measures are often adopted in the form of directives that have to be transposed into national legislation or even soft law instruments also connects this issue to the broader issue of how well the member states comply with EU law. The volume under review contributes to both of these debates. Unlike previous work on compliance with EU law, that have taken the form of case studies or large-n quantitative studies, Falkner and her colleagues have conducted a medium-n study. Through an extensive number of interviews with national and EU-level experts, an impressive amount of detailed empirical material has been collected regarding the implementation and enforcement within all member states of six labour law directives adopted during the 1990s. The authors address a number of issues that can be divided into two main themes: first, the characteristics of EU social policy and, second, compliance with EU law in this area. Regarding the former, they raise three issues. First, EU social policy is often accused of being rather inconsequential. Regarding this issue, the authors demonstrate that, at least in the area of labour law, the EU standards do go beyond existing national standards. Second, it has been questioned whether EU social policy really leads to an approximation of the living and working conditions in the member states. Here, the picture is less clear. While EU policies have led to a certain approximation of the conditions, this has not produced ‘full convergence of the different domestic rules and regulations’ (p. 346). In addition, the effects of EU social policy are still outweighed by liberalizing measures. Third, it is often assumed that the member states ignore the voluntarist elements of directives. The authors show that these constitute an important part of social policy directives, and that the member states frequently make use of them. There is thus no ‘logic of minimalism at play, but rather a logic of domestic politics’ (p. 349).
Book Review
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Regarding compliance, Falkner et al. discuss two items. First, the extent of compliance problems in the EU and, second, how such problems can be explained. It has often been claimed that the quality of the available data on compliance is rather poor, thus rendering it impossible to establish whether an ‘implementation deficit’ within the EU exists. Regarding this issue, the authors make an important
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