Source: http://docplayer.net/101470-Working-paper-policy-matters-but-how-tanja-a-borzel-tobias-hofmann-and-diana-panke-explaining-non-compliance-dynamics-in-the-eu.html
Timestamp: 2018-06-18 01:09:47
Document Index: 682172372

Matched Legal Cases: ['Art. 228', 'Art. 228', 'art 1', 'art 2', 'Art. 136', 'Art. 163']

Working Paper. Policy Matters But How? Tanja A. Börzel, Tobias Hofmann and Diana Panke. Explaining Non-Compliance Dynamics in the EU
Download "Working Paper. Policy Matters But How? Tanja A. Börzel, Tobias Hofmann and Diana Panke. Explaining Non-Compliance Dynamics in the EU"
1 Working Paper Policy Matters But How? Explaining Non-Compliance Dynamics in the EU Tanja A. Börzel, Tobias Hofmann and Diana Panke No. 24 February 2011
2 2 KFG Working Paper No. 24 February 2011 KFG Working Paper Series Edited by the Kolleg-Forschergruppe The Transformative Power of Europe The KFG Working Paper Series serves to disseminate the research results of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe by making them available to a broader public. It means to enhance academic exchange as well as to strengthen and broaden existing basic research on internal and external diffusion processes in Europe and the European Union. All KFG Working Papers are available on the KFG website at or can be ordered in print via to Copyright for this issue: Tanja A. Börzel, Tobias Hofmann, Diana Panke Editorial assistance and production: Farina Ahäuser, Corinna Blutguth Börzel, Tanja A./Hofmann, Tobias/Panke, Diana 2011: Policy Matters But How? Explaining Non-Compliance Dynamics in the EU, KFG Working Paper Series, No. 24, February 2011, Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG) The Transformative Power of Europe Freie Universität Berlin. ISSN (Print) ISSN (Internet) This publication has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Freie Universität Berlin Kolleg-Forschergruppe The Transformative Power of Europe: The European Union and the Diffusion of Ideas Ihnestr Berlin Germany Phone: +49 (0) Fax: +49 (0)
3 Policy Matters But How? 3 Policy Matters But How? Explaining Non-Compliance Dynamics in the EU Tanja A. Börzel, Tobias Hofmann and Diana Panke Abstract The European Union s infringement procedure is highly legalized. Nevertheless, as in other international institutions, non-compliance occurs on a regular basis and its transformation into compliance varies across EU infringement stages and over time. State of the art compliance literature focuses mainly on countryspecific explanations, such as power, capacity, and legitimacy. In particular power-capacity models explain a good part of whether non-compliance occurs and how quickly it can be resolved. Yet, these approaches leave substantial parts of the empirical variation that we observe unexplained. This paper argues that policy and, in particular, rule-specific variables although often neglected are important for explaining non-compliance. Based on a quantitative analysis, we show that policy matters not only for the frequency with which EU law is violated, but also the persistence of non-compliance over time and over the different stages of the infringement procedure.
4 4 KFG Working Paper No. 24 February 2011 The Authors Tanja A. Börzel is Professor of Political Science and holds the chair for European Integration at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin. Her research concentrates on questions of Governance, institutional change as a result of Europeanization as well as on the diffusion of ideas and policies within and outside of the European Union. Since October 2008, she coordinates the Research College The Transformative Power of Europe together with Thomas Risse. Contact: Tobias Hofmann is visiting instructor of government at the College of William & Mary and about to finish his PhD in Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin. His research interests include the political economy of international institutions and regional integration. Before joining the college of William & Mary faculty, he was a fellow at the Niehaus Center of Globalization and Governance and an associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. Contact: Diana Panke is Lecturer of Political Science at the University College Dublin. Her research interests focus on governance beyond the nation-state, including international negotiations, the creation and degeneration of international norms, Europeanization, comparative European Union politics, EU decision-making processes, modern theories of international relations as well as compliance and legalization. Contact:
5 Policy Matters But How? 5 Contents 1. Introduction 6 2. Non-Compliance and Policy-Variation 7 3. Policy-Explanations Rule-specific Explanations Conclusions 27 Literature 29 Appendix: Operationalization of Power and Capacity 33
6 6 KFG Working Paper No. 24 February Introduction Non-compliance haunts all international institutions, as even highly legalized compliance monitoring, management, and enforcement settings cannot completely prevent rule violations. 1 The infringement procedure of the European Union (EU) combines centralized compliance monitoring (the European Commission) with an elaborated procedure to resolve violations of EU Law. The European Commission opens infringement procedures for detected cases of suspected non-compliance and starts a managerial dialogue with the respective state. Should settlements fail, the Commission initiates the adjudication stage by referring the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which issues binding rulings. For the rather rare cases of highly persistent non-compliance, the Commission and the ECJ carry the case onwards to the enforcement stage, in which the ECJ can issue financial penalties (cf. Börzel 2001). Despite these institutional provisions, non-compliance occurs on a regular basis and includes all member states. 2 In addition, the transformation of norm violations into compliance varies across the stages of the EU compliance procedure and with respect to the time it takes to resolve infringement cases. Since the institutional design is constant, it cannot explain the empirical variance of member states non-compliance. The state of the art in non-compliance research focuses mainly on country-specific explanations (e.g. Knill 1998; Haverland 2000; for an overview cf. Mitchell 1996; Checkel 2001). In particular, power-capacity models explain a good part of whether non-compliance occurs and how fast or through which compliance instruments it can be resolved (Börzel et al. 2010). Yet, all these approaches leave substantial parts of the observed variation unexplained. We argue that this is due to the compliance literature s neglect of policyrelated explanations. Therefore, this paper focuses on policy-specific variables 3, which we show to be of high importance for the frequency of non-compliance and its persistence over time and the stages of the infringement procedure. In addition, it shows that rule-specific variables, such as high European misfit, a high complexity of rules, as well as the idleness of European law transposition, significantly increase the frequency of norm violations. The paper proceeds in the following steps. Firstly, we empirically assess the variation of non-compliance across policy fields (2). Subsequently, we develop policy-specific hypotheses and quantitatively test them (3). Variation in the frequency of compliance and its settlement dynamics between policy sectors cannot be completely captured by our policy explanations due to the heterogeneity of rules within policy fields. For example, while non-compliance cases from positive, market-correcting policy sectors seem to take longer to be settled both in terms of stages of the infringement procedure and days almost every policy field encompasses market-creating and market-correcting rules. Similarly, almost every regulative policy also encompasses redistributive effects. It can be difficult to aggregate them into distinct policy areas. To overcome these difficulties, we adopt an even more fine-grained approach. Next to policy-based hypotheses, we introduce rule-specific hypotheses and also test them with quantitative methods (4). 1 Cf. Abbott et al. 2000; Abbott/Snidal 2000; Duina 1997; Garrett et al. 1998; Goldstein et al. 2000; Helfer/Slaughter 1997; Hudec 1993; Joerges 2000; Kahler 2000; Keohane et al. 2000; Simmons 2000; Smith 2000; Stone Sweet/ Brunell 1997; Zangl 2001; Zürn/Joerges 2005 among others. 2 Cf. Duina 1997; Falkner et al. 2004; Falkner et al. 2005; Hartlapp 2007; Haverland 2000; Mbaye 2001; Mastenbroek 2003; Steunenberg 2006; Treib 2003 among others. 3 For similar arguments in favor of an approach that does not ignore variation across policies cf. Lampinen/Uusikylä 1998; König et al. 2005; Steunenberg 2007; Steunenberg/Rhinard 2005; Steunenberg/Kaeding 2008; Treutlein 2007; Haverland 2000; Haverland et al
7 Policy Matters But How? 7 This reveals that when new Directives are based on existing European legislation, the misfit for member states is kept to a minimum and the probability of infringements becomes smaller. Likewise, increasing complexity of Directives goes hand in hand with a higher share of non-compliance. Finally, rule-specific idleness makes infringements more common. The paper concludes that policy-, rule-, and countryspecific explanations of non-compliance are not competing, but can be combined. In terms of countryspecific variables, high EU-specific political power and low bureaucratic capacities foster non-compliance (cf. Börzel et al. 2010). European misfit and complexity interact with capacities. High misfit between the new Directive and the European aquis communautaire as well as highly complex Directives require more political, administrative, financial, and cognitive resources than Directives that resemble or adapt already existing ones and Directives that are not as complex. Thus, states that struggle with capacity shortcomings face particularly difficult problems concerning the transposition and implementation of complex and original EU laws. 2. Non-Compliance and Policy-Variation While the European Union has successively expanded its legislative competencies, the implementation and enforcement of European law firmly rests within the responsibility of the member states. The European Commission has the right to bring legal action against member states it suspects to infringe on European law (based on Article 226 ECT). The infringement proceedings consist of several stages. The first two, suspected infringements (complaints, petitions, etc.) and Formal Letters, are informal and treated as confidential. The formal infringement proceedings start when the European Commission issues a Reasoned Opinion. Should non-compliance prevail after managerial dialogue, the European Commission refers cases to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This initiates the adjudication phase, which ends with a binding judgement. If the member states still refuse to comply, the Commission can open new proceedings (Art. 228 ECT), which may result in a second ECJ judgment linked to financial penalties (cf. Börzel 2001). When we map the frequency of non-compliance across policy fields between 1978 and , we can see that all member states together infringe on European legislation in some policy areas more often than in others. Opened non-compliance cases (DV1) 5 are not randomly distributed across policies. 6 When we graph the annual number of Reasoned Opinions per legal act in a specific policy sector, we can see that in half of the policy sectors there are hardly any infringements (cf. Graph 1). However, in the enterprise (i.e. corporate law) sector, member states violate an average seven percent of the legal acts in force every year. Infringement numbers are also relatively high for environmental policies. 7 4 For more information on the dataset, cf. Börzel et al For more information on the dataset, cf. Börzel et al In this part of the paper, in which we focus on policyspecific explanations of non-compliance, we distinguish between two types of dependent variables DV1 and DV2a/b. The first dependent variable (DV1) measures the frequency at which non-compliance occurs. It is based on Reasoned Opinions, i.e. the first official stage for which the Commission publishes non-compliance data. The second dependent variable (DV2) measures the persistence of non-compliance. It further distinguishes between the duration of non-compliance over time (DV2a) and the number of stages of the infringement procedure it takes to settle specific infringement cases (DV2b). 6 The variance across policies is even larger than that between countries (cf. Börzel et al. 2007). 7 The same holds true for the justice and home affairs policy sector. However, this sector was only introduced
8 8 KFG Working Paper No. 24 February 2011 Graph 1: DV1 Annual Reasoned Opinions per Legal Act (in %) by Policy, Reasoned Opinions per Legal Act (in %) tra fis tax com agr adm eco edu ten emp sem env ent If we look at the persistence of non-compliance (DV2) instead of the occurrence, we see a very different picture. While European legal acts in the enterprise sector are the ones most prone to be infringed on, the enterprise non-compliance cases are also the ones that are most rapidly settled on average. While non-compliance is usually transformed into compliance in less than two years in the areas of enterprise and education legislation, infringement proceedings in the fisheries policy sector tend to drag on for three years before they are successfully resolved. after the other policy sectors by the Maastricht Treaty in late Moreover, justice and home affairs has only subsequently been communitarized and made subject to Article 226 infringement proceedings. Therefore, we decided to exclude this policy sector from our analyses. 8 adm = Administration, agr = Agriculture, com = Competition, eco = Economic and financial affairs, edu = Education and research, emp = Social affairs, ent = Enterprise, env = Environment, fis = Fisheries, sem = Single market, tax = Tax, ten = Transportation and Energy, and tra = Trade.
9 Policy Matters But How? 9 Graph 2: DV2a Average Duration of Non-compliance (in Days) by Policy, Duration of Infringements Proceedings in Days 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 ent agr edu ten eco tra com env sem emp tax adm fis As there is a large positive correlation between the duration of non-compliance (DV2a) and the stages individual infringement cases reach (DV2b), it is not surprising that enterprise is the one policy sector that shows substantial variation across the stages of the infringement procedure. It starts out as the policy sector with the second largest number of infringements (not controlling for the number of legal acts in the policy sectors), but ends up in the middle field at the later stages (cf. Graph 3). Most of the other policy sectors stay compliance leaders or laggards across the stages. They might change their ranking within their respective group, but they do not substantially change their position. Agriculture, environment, and single market account for most infringements at all stages. By contrast, trade, economic and financial affairs, education and research, and competition feature very few infringements across the board. Overall, it seems that policy sector-specific non-compliance remains stable across the stages of the infringement procedure (Graph 3).
10 10 KFG Working Paper No. 24 February 2011 Graph 3: DV2b Non-Compliance across Stages for Selected Policy Sectors, Percentage of Infringements Stages: 1 Reasoned Opinions, 2 ECJ Referrals, 3 Rulings, 4 Referrals, Art. 228 agr emp ent env fis sem tax ten In order to inquire whether there is significant cross-policy variation beyond the graphical evidence, we analyze the effects of binary policy variables on the three variants of our dependent variable, i.e. DV1 and DV2a/b. First, we look at the occurrence of non-compliance in different policy sectors with an OLS regression (Model 1, Table 1). In a second step, we try to answer the question whether the number of stages that individual infringements reach and how long it takes for infringement cases to be settled depends on the policy sectors that the infringed legal acts belong to. In order to provide a statistical answer, we use an ordered probit model (Model 2, Table 1) and a Cox proportional hazard model (Model 3, Table 1). From the models in Table 1 it becomes obvious that there is significant policy variation with respect to the occurrence of non-compliance. Three policy sectors fisheries, tax, and trade have significantly less and five have more Reasoned Opinions per legal act and year on average (in %) than the arbitrary reference category agricultural policy (cf. Model 1, Table 1). With respect to the numbers of stages of the infringement procedure, enterprise cases have the lowest probability of making it from one stage to another, fisheries cases the highest (cf. Model 2, Table 1). Duration-wise, only enterprise cases last significantly shorter than agricultural cases, which form the reference category. Also, disputes over compliance with European 9 All sectors that make up less than 2 percent of the infringement cases across all stages of the EU s official infringement procedure were excluded from this graph in the interest of clarity. In fact, not a single case from the economic and financial affairs, education and research, and trade sectors has made it to the fourth stage (ECJ Referral, Article 228) in the years
11 Policy Matters But How? 11 fisheries legislation have the best chances for a long survival, i.e. to be dragged on for a significantly longer time than all the others (cf. Model 3, Table 1). Table 1: Policy Sectors and Infringements Models: (1) (2) (3) Administration Competition Economic & Financial Affairs DV1 DV2a DV2b Education & Rresearch *** Enterprise *** Environment *** Fisheries * Single Market *** Tax ** Transportation & Energy *** Trade *** Constant *** ** ** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** Cut Point *** Cut Point *** Cut Point *** *** *** *** ** *** *** *** *** Time Dummies yes yes yes Observations 273 5,462 4,591 Adjusted R-squared 0.74 Time at Risk 2,974,371 Regressions with two-tailed t-tests and robust (Hubert/White) standard errors. *** = p 0.01, ** = p < 0.05, * = p < 0.1.
12 12 KFG Working Paper No. 24 February Policy-Explanations In order to explain why certain policy fields are more often infringed upon and why cases from some fields, such as enterprise, are settled at the earlier stages of the compliance procedure and more rapidly than from others, this third section develops policy-field hypotheses on the occurrence of non-compliance (DV1) and its persistence (DV2), respectively. This is made somewhat difficult by the International Relations (IR) legacy of the existing compliance and implementation literature, which is strongly state-centered and hardly considers policy variables. However, there are exceptions. At least three prominent approaches highlight differences between regulative and non-regulative policies (Majone 1993), distributive and redistributive policies (Windhoff-Héritier 1980), and market-creating/negative and market-correcting/ positive policies (Zürn 1997). Majone argues that the costs of policy formulation and decision-making in regulatory policy sectors are relatively low at the European level, but often significant in material and political terms when it comes to the implementation of European legislation at the domestic level. Regulative policies are more prone to non-compliance than the non-regulative ones because the former usually come at higher costs, which the implementing authorities might be neither willing nor able to bear (Majone 1993). Windhoff- Héritier (1980) focuses more on how policies differ in the extent to which they redistribute resources. States find it easier to comply with non-redistributive policies than with redistributive ones because their implementation faces less opposition at the domestic level. Unlike distributive policies, redistributive policies typically specify winners and losers (Wilson 1980). Some groups benefit from redistributive policies, while others have to pay for them. The latter groups especially if they are well defined, small, and (therefore) not suffering from collective action problems (Olson 1965) will fiercely try to prevent the implementation and resist the enforcement of redistributive European legislation, thereby increasing non-compliance. Third, legal acts from certain policy sectors might have a wider regulative scope than policies from other sectors, i.e. address more and broader issues. The logic behind this argument refers to the costs of implementation once again. Policy sectors, in which the EU has comprehensive legislative competencies (wide scope), are expected to come with higher costs and more infringements than policy sectors in which the EU can only legislate on selective or minor issues. The wider the scope, the more member states might be unwilling or unable to bear the costs that come with the implementation and enforcement of comprehensive and far reaching policies. 10 Table 2: Policy-specific Hypotheses Part 1 Regulative Redistributive Scope If the better part of a policy sector is regulative, it will experience more non-compliance than non-regulative policy sectors. If the better part of a policy sector is redistributive, it will experience more non-compliance than nonredistributive policy sectors. If the better part of a policy sector has a wide regulative scope, it will experience more non-compliance than policy sectors with a more narrow scope. 10 Somewhat similar to the scope is the concept of specializations (or the lack thereof), which is described by Steunenberg/Kaeding 2008 as the extent to which directives regulate rather technical issues, which are intended to be implemented uniformly by national administrations (11).
13 Policy Matters But How? 13 Finally, Zürn argues that policy sectors vary in their affinity for non-compliance along a positive, marketcorrecting versus negative, market-making dimension, with positive/market-correcting policies being the ones that are more likely to be infringed on (Zürn 1997; Börzel et al. 2003). The idea is that negative or market-making policies do not require member states to take action or develop and police the application of new legislation, but only to abstain from interfering with the free flow of market forces. By contrast, positive policies do not just aim at the elimination of distortions of competition in Europe, but explicitly require states to interfere and to take action (Scharpf 1999; Wallace 2005). The transposition and implementation of positive policies does not only come at a higher cost, but they also create more opportunities for member states to non-comply. However, Zürn s argument does not stop there. In fact, he hypothesizes interaction effects between the type of policy and member states capacity on the one hand and policies and the phase of the transposition and implementation process on the other hand (Zürn 1997). More specifically, he suggests that European legal acts from a positive policy sector are particularly vulnerable to non-compliance (i) if member states lack government capacity, i.e. the financial endowment as well as the efficient bureaucracy that can mobilize and channel those resources into the compliance process, and (ii) when it comes to their practical application and enforcement rather than their legal transposition into national law. Elaborating on Zürn, we can also argue that not only a lack of government capacity, but also a lack of government autonomy should make compliance especially with positive policies more difficult for member states (cf. Börzel et al. 2003). In that context, government autonomy refers to institutional and partisan veto players (and is the higher, the lower the number of veto players is), which can block the implementation of international rules because of the costs they have to (co-) bear (Alesina/Rosenthal 1995; Haverland 2000; Tsebelis 2002; Linos 2007). Taken together, we end up with four additional policy-centered hypotheses, three of which are about interaction effects. These hypotheses are summarized in Table 3. Table 3: Policy-specific Hypotheses Part 2 Positive If the better part of a policy sector has a positive character, it will experience more non-compliance than negative policy sectors. Interactions With decreasing levels of government capacity, the noncompliance promoting effects of positive integration become more pronounced. With decreasing levels of government autonomy, the noncompliance promoting effects of positive integration become more pronounced. The non-compliance promoting effects of positive integration are more striking when it comes to the practical application and the enforcement of EU law than for its legal transposition. All four theoretical accounts require a categorization of the policy fields. This is extremely difficult, since it is highly likely that every policy field, or in fact, every single European legal act entails both regulative and redistributive elements and some elements of market correction and of market creation, respectively. This is why previous studies have focused on analyzing policies which are straight forward in their categorization (Scharpf 1996, 1997; Zürn 1997, 2002). Yet, even on the level of individual policies, the
14 14 KFG Working Paper No. 24 February 2011 categorization along our four variables remains difficult. Surrendering to the methodological challenge might be tempting but would render the theoretical distinctions made by Scharpf empirically irrelevant. We claim that analyzing the general goals the EU aims to achieve within a certain policy area, its underlying problem-solving approach and the policy instruments mainly invoked to achieve these goals allows to determine the predominant character of a policy area. Our categorization is certainly not beyond criticism but provides a first cut into an important research area. Table 4: Policy Sectors and their Characteristics Concept: Regulative Redistributive Scope Positive Administration Agriculture X Competition X X Economic & Financial Affairs X Education & Research X X Social Affairs X X X X Enterprise X X X Environment X X X X Fisheries X Single Market X X Tax X Transport & Energy X X X Trade X X We find that only three policy areas actually have a predominantly market-correcting character, while all other policy areas either pursue mostly market-making goals, or both. The social policy of the EU has clearly market-correcting goals (Art. 136 ECT) since it aims at improving living and working conditions to protect workers health and safety. In a similar vein, environmental policy is designed to correct market failures by setting production and product standards to fight environmental pollution (Art ECT). Finally, while research policy aims at improving the competitiveness of European industries, it does so by invoking primarily market-correcting instruments, including financial and technical assistance (Art. 163 ECT). As for the regulatory scope of policy areas, we argue that it is widest in the areas of agriculture, environment, social affairs, and single market. These sectors regulate many diverse issues ranging e.g. from biotechnology to air quality in the environment sector and from gender-related issues to working hours and safety regulations in social affairs. Fisheries and tax, by contrast, cover only very few issues. Finally, in line with Majone s description of the EU as a regulatory state (Majone 1997), many policy areas have been assigned a predominantly regulatory character. Exceptions are administration, agriculture and
15 Policy Matters But How? 15 fisheries policies. While the former does not seem to fall in any of the developed categories, agricultural policies have both redistributive and distributive policy goals and instruments and do not primarily aim at setting standards and prescribing behaviour. The same holds true for fisheries, which invokes, however, more redistributive instruments for protecting market participants than agricultural policy does. In a similar vein, social affairs, enterprise, environmental policy and transport and energy policies invoke measures with redistributive implications, but do so along with regulatory ones. Empirical Findings Having discussed the policy-specific theoretical approaches to non-compliance and operationalization of our policy variables, it is time to turn to empirically test the derived hypotheses. It is important to notice that we need different datasets to test these hypotheses. To test the separate policy-specific hypotheses, we just need a dataset that has the policy year as its unit of analysis. This allows us to compare whether on average more Reasoned Opinions address infringements in regulative or non-regulative, redistributive or non-redistributive, etc. policy sectors. As the first two of Zürn s interactive hypotheses make reference to policy- and member state-specific variables, we need a dataset that captures both of these aspects. The unit of analysis for Models 2 and 3 of Table 5 is the negative versus positive country year, i.e. for each country year there are two observations one focusing on the non-compliance with negative policies and one on non-compliance with positive policies. Finally, to test the third of Zürn s interactive hypotheses, we have to distinguish between non-compliance that occurs during the legal transposition phase and those cases that happen during practical application. The unit of analysis is not only the policy year as in Model 1 of Table 5, but the legal transposition versus practical application and enforcement policy year. Table 5 shows that the regulative scope of a policy sector might influence the frequency of non-compliance (cf. Model 5, Table 5), while neither Majone s nor Windhoff-Héritier s policy distinctions seem to matter when it comes to the question of compliance (cf. Models 1 and 5, Table 5). When we control for the member state-specific variables, there is some evidence for Zürn s argument that positive policies might indeed follow a different logic of implementation than negative ones. There is a strong positive correlation between a policy sector s market-correcting nature and a larger number of infringements on European law (cf. Models 2 and 3.Table 5). Also, the first of the two interactive capacity hypotheses is strongly supported (cf. Model 3, Table 5). While the number of veto players does not affect the relation between the characteristics of a policy sector and the number of infringements, effective bureaucracies do. The negative and significant interaction effect between the positive dummy and the government capacity indicator suggests that more capacity reduces the non-compliance promoting effects of positive policy sectors. This is perfectly in line with the respective interactive hypothesis.
16 16 KFG Working Paper No. 24 February 2011 Table 5: Policy-specific Explanations of the Occurrence of Non-compliance 11 Policy: Models: Regulative Redistributive Scope Positive Phase: *** *** Application Power: GDP Shapley S. Index Capacity: GDPpc Efficiency *** Constraints Interaction Effects: SSI * Efficiency * Pos. * Efficiency *** Pos. * Constraints Pos. * Application Constant ** Time Dummies yes yes yes yes yes Observations 252 Policy Years 464 Negative vs. Positive County Years 464 Negative vs. Positive County Years 564 Transposition vs. application policy years Adj. R-squared Transposition vs. application policy years Regressions with two-tailed t-tests and robust (Hubert/White) standard errors with clustering on member states (Models 2 and 3) and policy sectors (Models 1, 4, and 5). *** = p 0.01, ** = p < 0.05, * = p < The operationalization of the power and capacity variables is explained in Appendix.
17 Policy Matters But How? 17 Table 6: Policy-specific Explanations for the Persistence of Non-compliance Policy: Models: (1) (2) (3) (4) Positive *** Power: GDP * Shapley S. Index Capacity: GDPpc Efficiency *** Constraints ** Interaction Effects: SSI * Efficiency *** * *** * Positive * Efficiency Pos. * Constraints Cut point *** Cut point *** Cut point *** Number of Stages (DV2a) *** *** *** *** ** *** *** ** Time Dummies yes yes yes yes Observations 5,181 5,181 4,377 4,377 R-squared Duration (DV2b) Time at Risk 2,905,849 2,905,849 Regressions with two-tailed t-tests and robust (Hubert/White) standard errors with clustering on member states (Models 2 and 3) and policy sectors (Models 1, 4, and 5). *** = p 0.01, ** = p < 0.05, * = p < 0.1. We also test the policy-sectors hypotheses for the persistence of non-compliance (DV2). Here, we focus especially on the relative promising hypotheses on negative versus positive policies and the interactions between policy-centered and country-centered variables. 12 For this, we use the same datasets we used for Models 2 and 3 of Table 1, but append them with a dummy variable that distinguishes between positive and negative policy sectors and the interactions between this variable and government autonomy and government capacity. 12 We also looked at the effect of the other policy variables (cf. Table 5) on the persistence and duration of noncompliance, but did not find any significant effects. Therefore, we concentrated our testing efforts on the positive versus negative hypothesis in Table 6.
18 18 KFG Working Paper No. 24 February 2011 Table 6 reveals that non-compliance from positive policy sectors take longer to be settled both in terms of stages of the EU infringement procedure and days. For this effect, however, it seems to make no difference whether member states have effective bureaucracies and/or many domestic veto players. None of the two hypothesized interaction effects between government capacity, government autonomy, and policy sector type turn out to be significant. Overall, the evidence for policy effects on non-compliance is mixed. However, this might be more due to the operationalization of the policy covariates than to the actual effects of policies. The problem is that all of the policy hypotheses start from the level of the individual legal act and aggregate up to the policy sector level. Obviously, this comes with problems as policy sectors are usually not homogenous, but feature variation along the different policy dimensions within themselves. While some environmental legal acts have regulative characteristics, others do not. Some social affairs regulations have a wide scope, others have a narrow one. Some legal acts in the policy sector enterprise follow a positive implementation logic, others a negative one. In order to tackle this problem, the next section focuses on the individual legal acts that make up the policy sectors. 4. Rule-Specific Explanations While compliance varies across policies, it is empirically extremely difficult to classify policy fields along analytical lines, such as negative versus positive or distributive versus non-distributive. For most policy sectors it is hard to tell whether their overall orientation is market-creating or correcting or regulative rather than redistributive. Since heterogeneity within policy sectors is the major problem for the development and testing of policy hypotheses, we turn our attention to single legal acts instead. We are interested in how the characteristics of specific legal acts affect their chances to be infringed on or complied with (DV1). At this point, we do not look at our second dependent variable, i.e. the time (DV2a) and the number of stages of the infringement procedure (DV2b) it takes for individual instances of non-compliance to be settled. While the necessary data for such an analysis is available to us, the analysis itself poses methodological challenges, which we do not tackle at this time. In essence, the problem is that as we have shown in previous work on non-compliance and its prevalence (Börzel et al. under review) the very factors that influence our dependent variable of interest (DV2) are also critical to the event in question, i.e. non-compliance. More precisely, the principal problem is sample selection bias. Substantively, we want to know whether country-, policy-, and rule-specific factors help to prolong the duration of infringement proceedings and make infringement cases reach later stages of the EU s infringement procedure. However, the question whether we even observe the dependent variable of interest depends on the probability of selection, which itself depends on similar covariates. Both outcomes of the selection equation compliance and non-compliance are conditionally linked to our outcome of interest (duration or stages) through the variables that determine the duration or number of stages. Hence, to explain duration, the selection of non-compliance into the sample has to be explicitly addressed. However, the development of appropriate estimation techniques for probit and count data models at the first and survival and ordered probit models at the second stage is still in flux (Boehmke et al. 2006; Kachi 2007; Boehmke/Meissner 2008).
19 Policy Matters But How? 19 Focusing exclusively on the first dependent variable, our rule-specific, empirical analysis still requires a new dataset that differs from the one we analyzed in section 3. We need compiled data on whether individual legal acts have been complied with by all, some, or none of the EU member states as well as data on corresponding characteristics (independent variables) for each of the legal acts in the database. As collecting information for all independent variables for the more than 10,000 European legal acts in force over the period is beyond the scope of this paper, we focus on the year 1993 and information on all 118 EU Directives that came into force in that year. This 1993 subset is a representative sample of the larger non-compliance dataset. It has very similar properties (cf. Graph 4, left versus right): Italy, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, and France are the usual suspects forming the group of compliance laggards, while Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, and the UK infringed only relatively few of the 1993 EU Directives. 13 Therefore, it should be possible to draw inference about legal act-specific causes of noncompliance from the sample for the universe of infringement cases in the European Union. Graph 4: Infringements on 1993 Directives versus Average Annual Infringements 14 Infringements on 1993 Directives Average Annual Infringements Reasoned Opinions DN NL LU UK IR ES DE FR PRGR BE IT DN NL LU GB IR ES DE FR PR GR BE IT 13 The data also shows that if compliance leaders infringe on a Directive, they do so only once. Some of the laggards, by contrast, infringe on the same Directives several times. For instance, the Commission has initiated infringement proceedings for infringements on Council Directive 93/37/EEC concerning the coordination of procedures for the award of public works contracts against France five times since Therefore, Belgium, France, and Greece can call exactly as many infringements their own as Italy (44 to be precise), which leads the pack in terms of number of legal acts infringed on. However, it should also be noted that ¾ of the 118 EU Directives passed in 1993 have never been infringed on by any member state and only one Directive Council Directive 93/13/EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts has been infringed on by more than ten EU members. 14 The graph on the left shows the number of the 118 EU Directives that came into force in 1993 that each of the EU 12 member states infringed on between 1993 and The graph on the right depicts the average annual number of infringements of all European legal acts per EU 12 member state in the years
20 20 KFG Working Paper No. 24 February 2011 Looking at our data from a policy sector- instead of a member state-perspective (Graph 5), we can see that there is substantial variation in the probability with which 1993 EU Directives from the eight covered policy sectors are infringed on. Doing so, we control for the number of Directives that came into force in these policy sectors in 1993 because this constitutes the number of Directives that member states can potentially infringe on. While there are 46 Directives that deal with agricultural issues and 36 that are concerned with the European market, only two new Directives address competition. The average member state infringes on more than one out of every three enterprise, social affairs, and tax Directives. Contrariwise, most member states comply with competition Directives most of the time. Graph 5: Reasoned Opinion per 1993 EU Directive (in %) by Average Member State Reasoned Opinions per legal act (in %), average MS com ten sem env agr ent emp tax How can we explain that only some of these 118 Directives are infringed on? What makes the ones that are violated different from those that are complied with? Also, why do some member states infringe on some of these Directives while others do not? To answer these questions, we take a closer look at three interrelated concepts misfit, complexity, and time and derive several testable hypotheses, mainly from implementation and Europeanization approaches, the management school, enforcement theory, and a relatively new literature that also tries to analyze the effects of rule specific variables in the context of transposition (delays). 15 First, taking the individual legal act as the unit of analysis, we can actually analyze the effects of the fit of European rules on their chances to be infringed on. As is one of the most basic assumptions in noncompliance research, inconvenient rules can facilitate violations, since only they require states to invest resources, which they might be unwilling (Downs et al. 1996; Martin 1992) or unable to do (Chayes/ 15 Cf. Steunenberg 2007; Haverland et al. 2008; and Steunenberg/Kaeding 2008.
Institute for European Integration Research Working Paper Series CONNECTING THE DOTS: CASE STUDIES AND EU IMPLEMENTATION RESEARCH Dimiter Toshkov 1 Moritz Knoll 2 Lisa Wewerka 3 Working Paper No. 10/2010
QUANTIFYING NON-COMPLIANCE IN THE EU A Database on EU Infringement Proceedings
QUANTIFYING NON-COMPLIANCE IN THE EU A Database on EU Infringement Proceedings Tanja A. Börzel and Moritz Knoll November 2012 Berliner Arbeitspapier zur Europäischen Integration Nr. 15 Berlin Working Paper