Law and order in the European Union: explaining variations in compliance with the European Community treaty

In: Discussion Papers / Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Forschungsschwerpunkt Zivilgesellschaft, Konflikte und Demokratie, Abteilung Transnationale Konflikte und Internationale Institutionen, Band 2006-303

Abstract

"Neither the enforcement nor the management schools of compliance can explain crossnational variation in the number of violations of European Union law or in the number of cases settled by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). These patterns of non-compliance require the inclusion of the procedural dimension of compliance, which is affected by the degree of autonomy executives have vis-à-vis their national parliaments. Multivariate analysis was applied to a database of violations of the European Community Treaty from 1978 to 2002, to determine why violations may or may not be settled by the ECJ. The results show that increasing the amount of democratic legitimacy in the European governance process can limit its effectiveness in the area of compliance with EU primary legislation, namely, the EC Treaty. This has important implications for understanding the process of European integration, given the continued existence of a democratic deficit in the EU. Unless democratic pathways are created which would allow EU citizens to shape the EU legislative process via their national representatives to the European Parliament such that European law would conflict less with national law, EU membership will increasingly mean fewer privileges and more onerous legal obligations." (author's abstract)