Suchergebnisse

In recent years, non-compliance (the failure to respect the rules) with European Union policies has received ever more attention in both public debates and scholarly writings. But why should we worry about it? No policy has ever been implemented exactly to the letter of what seems to be intended from a reading of the policy as it appears 'on the books'. In the absence of data comparing the national and the supranational levels, there is no way to verify in a quantitative sense if the EU's compliance deficiencies are actually worse than the average at the national level. What is more, not even the most law-abiding society functions without any breaches of rules, so why should the EU -- specially as it is a 'compound' polity (Schmidt, 2004) at a greater distance from the daily lives of its people and their affairs? Adapted from the source document.

This chapter presents in brief the EU"s policy geared towards equality issues, both with regard to gender and more broadly. It then discusses (non-) compliance with EU law as a major problem and presents potential remedies. The latter are tailor-made on the basis of findings from two large-scale research projects on EU policy implementation, in the "old" EU15 plus later four countries from Central and Eastern Europe: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. Going beyond the traditional "compliance" debate that is ongoing in various journals and geared towards a specialized political science sub-community, this contribution focuses on the wider social reform issues arising from the finding that there are serious compliance problems almost everywhere in the EU, particularly when enforcement and application of the equality and working time standards are considered and not only formal "transposition" into domestic law.

AbstractThis article compares the performance of state institutions and compliance with EU law in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. The public institutions highlighted are of crucial relevance when it comes to enforcing EU social standards and include the court and legal systems as well as labour inspectorates and equal treatment authorities. Expert and practitioner assessments point to major shortcomings in their institutional performance. The procedural compliance pattern to which these shortcomings give rise closely resembles that found by previous studies in some Western European countries, notably Ireland and Italy. Thus, the four countries examined here fall within a 'world of dead letters' as far as their compliance with EU law is concerned. In this 'world', EU directives tend to be transposed in a politicised mode (although so far, this happened rather timely and correctly) and there is frequent non-compliance at the later stages of monitoring and enforcement.

"Das vorliegende Papiers ruft zu expliziteren und differenzierteren Operationalisierungen im Rahmen der Forschung über Europäisierungsprozesse auf. Konkret werden Konzeptualisierungen sowohl von Aspekten der unabhängigen als auch der abhängigen 'Variablen' von Europäisierung vorgeschlagen. Auf einer solchen Grundlage könnten in einem zweiten Schritt dann auch aussagekräftige Sekundäranalysen die Ergebnisse zu einzelnen Politikfeldern übergreifend weiterführen. Die Ausführungen werden jeweils kurz mit praktischen Beispielen und knapp zusammengefassten Teilergebnissen aus einem Forschungsverbund zu Fragen der Implementierung von sechs arbeitsrechtlichen EG-Richtlinien untermauert." (Autorenreferat)

Introduces a special journal issue on European Union (EU) treaty reform, noting that moving beyond formal treaty reform & transcending economic interests are necessary for understanding EU treaty reform. Treaty reform does not necessarily take place at formal summits, but may occur between Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs). It is also stated that aspects other than economic interests & bargaining power can significantly impact treaty reform. This special issue argues that negotiating in IGCs involves the domestically shaped preferences of participating governments as well as institutionalization at the EU level. 1 Table, 30 References. J. Backman