1 Managing and Enforcing Compliance with EU law: The Perspective of the EU Commission

Studies on EU policy-making generally disregard the key role played by the Commission as an enforcement agent responsible for the instigation and continuation of infringement cases. Furthermore, the Commission employs both amicable (‘management’) and coercive means (‘enforcement’) to induce compliance by member states, which are reflected in the different stages of the infringement proceeding. In contrast to current research, this study incorporates the perspective of the Commission on non-compliance. Based on assumptions about the relation between the Commission and member states, it is assumed that different mechanisms drive the instigation of infringement proceedings and their escalation to later stages. Thus, it is predicted that conflict in the Council and member state low level of acceptance for EU policies increase the probability of instigating infringement cases. However, the same factors are expected to make escalations of infringements to ECJ referrals less likely, because the Commission dependence on the cooperation of member states. The hypotheses are tested using a dataset on the policy preferences of the Commission and 15 member states with regards to 18 EU directives. On the basis of multinomial logit and ordered logit regression analyses, I find evidence that there are differences between the effects on the instigation and the escalation of infringement cases