Ensuring EU Member State Compliance with European Rules and Principles. The Alternatives to Top-Down Enforcement

For a successful effectuation of the rights of EU citizens and third country nationals, it is crucially important that the rules and principles flowing from the European Treaties and the associated legislation are ensured in full. The available methods of public enforcement (in particular the monitoring powers of the Commission) are however insufficient to achieve that goal: compliance with the relevant European rules and norms also depends to a considerable extent on the policy dynamics, public infrastructure and (styles of) administrative governance of the country concerned. This paper attempts to fill a gap which is believed to lie between, on the one hand, leading political science theories on the reception of EU law in the Member States, and on the other, the main legal studies on the quality of legislation and the (in)adequacy of the existing procedural frameworks for effectuating citizens’ rights. The main objective is to explore alternative avenues for facilitating the interplay between the EU and the national legal orders. By providing vivid illustrations of existing bottlenecks, asymmetric centrifugal and centripetal forces and avoidable feedback-loops, it points out how current practices may be enhanced, and highlights possible new directions for promoting a more structural compliance