Suchergebnisse

While the consequences of becoming an EU member state for national policies are usually the core concern of pre-membership debates and of post-accession assessments, studies on the effects of European integration on the political systems of the now fifteen member states have so far been less numerous. Among the new EU members, which are ideal cases for studying domestic accession effects, Austria is a particularly challenging case regarding top-down impact on the national political system. A number of specific precautions were taken in order to protect typical features of the national political system (notably the traditional roles of parliament, Länder and social partners) from being eroded in the multi-level system. The basic research question of this article is whether or not these measures were actually successful. How "sticky" is the EU upon closer inspection, i.e. how pervasive are its effects on adverse national structures? Can national measures, even at the constitutional level, outweigh specific consequences of participating in Euro-politics? If not, why not? The conclusions distinguish specific Austrian variables from generalisable ones and discuss the findings in the light of the existing literature.

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.