Implementation of EU Social Policy in the New Member States

1
Implementation of EU Social Policy in the New
Member States

• Dimiter D. Toshkov
• Department of Public Administration,
• Leiden University

2
Research Question

• How to explain compliance with social policy law
  in the new member states?
• What is the influence of party preferences and
  government efficiency?
• Three aspects of the process
• I. Accession negotiations
• II. Transposition
• III. Implementation

3
Theoretical Perspectives

• Two broad visions of implementation
• political or administrative process
• enforcement vs. management approaches to
  compliance in International Relations
• rationalist vs. sociological institutionalist
  accounts of implementation in the EU
• Two focal points the impact of preferences and
  the impact of capacity

4
Why EU Social Policy?

• Several sub-domains within the policy area
  (anti-discrimination, health and safety, etc.)
• Sufficient size and time-span of legislative
  activity
• Issues of high and low salience
• Relatively clear party ideological positions in
  regard to social policy

5
Growth of EU Social Policy Directives
6
Analysis Part I. Accession Negotiations

• Data length of negotiations and number of
  transitional periods
• Method bivariate plots
• Findings
• short negotiations, especially for the Helsinki
  group
• small number of transitional periods
• L/R ideology might influence the number of trans.
  periods

7
Length of negotiations and transitional periods
gained
8
Analysis Part II. Transposition

• Data Number of directives with finalized
  transpositions in any six-month period
  (1998-2005) in a country (time series
  cross-sectional data)
• Method TSCS methods for count data
• Main findings
• party approval of European integration increases
  the number of directives transposed within each
  country/period
• party approval of EU social policy does too
• higher government effectiveness does too
• Left/Right and Traditionalist/Libertarianist
  party preferences do not matter.

9
(No Transcript)
10
Analysis Part III. Implementation

• Data number of infringement procedures started
• Method bivariate plots
• Findings
• a considerable but still moderate amount of
  infringement procedures started
• some countries seem to have relatively more
  problems in the social policy field

11
Non-transposition and infringement procedures
12
Conclusions (1)

• Party preferences for European integration
  influence the transposition of EU law.
• Party preferences for the specific EU policy
  influence the transposition of EU law.
• Ideological party preferences do not have an
  impact on transposition. They might matter during
  the negotiation phase.
• Government effectiveness has a strong impact.

13
Conclusions (2)

• Both capacity and (specific types) of preferences
  influence compliance with EU social policy.
• The new member-states have incorporated rather
  fast and successfully the social acquis.
• Hard law can work.
• Does compliance with the EU foster convergence in
  the social policy field?

14

• Thank you for your attention!
• http//euresearch.leidenuniv.nl