Complying with Europe: EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States

What does EU law truly mean for the member states? Do they abide or don't they? This book presents the first encompassing and in-depth empirical study of the effects of 'voluntaristic' and (partly) 'soft' EU policies in all 15 member states. The authors examine 90 case studies across a range of EU Directives and shed light on burning contemporary issues in political science, integration theory, and social policy. They reveal that there are major implementation failures and that, to date, the European Commission has not been able adequately to perform its control function. While all countries are occasional non-compliers, some quite frequently privilege their domestic political concerns over performance of their EU-related duties. Others neglect these EU obligations as a matter of course. This study answers questions of crucial importance for politics in theory and in practice, and suggests how implementation of EU law can be fostered in the future.List of figures page List of tables Preface 1 Introduction: flexible EU governance in domestic practice 2 Theorising the domestic impact of EU law: the State of the art and beyond 3 EU social policy over time: the role of Directives 4 The Employment Contract Information Directive: a small but useful social complement to the internal market 5 The Pregnant Workers Directive: European social policy between protection and employability 6 The Working Time Directive: European Standards taken hostage by domestic politics 7 The Young Workers Directive: a safety net with holes 8 The Parental Leave Directive: compulsory policy innovation and voluntary over-implementation 9 The Part-time Work Directive: a facilitator of national reforms 10 Voluntary reforms triggered by the Directives 11 The EU Commission and (non-)compliance in the member states 12 Beyond policy change: convergence of national public-private relations? 13 Implementation across countries and Directives 14 Why do member states fail to comply? Testing the hypotheses suggested in the literature 15 Three worlds of compliance: a typology 16 Conclusions: myth and reality of social Europe References Inde