A street-level perspective on non-compliance in the EU: new lessons to draw?

ABSTRACT

European integration fundamentally depends upon the respect for and implementation of harmonized rules that ensure equivalent conditions between all member states. However, these rules are only as good as their practical implementation. While there is a vast amount of literature analysing how EU legislation is enshrined into national law, EU implementation studies still struggle to explain deficiencies in their application on the ground. Especially accounts on the role of street-level implementers, i.e. those actors making most discretionary decisions and holding the technical knowledge, are scarce. This article intends to contribute to our understanding of practical implementation by presenting the results of a qualitative case study on the remaining challenges for street-level implementers to comply with EU drug safety legislation in four member states. The analysis substantiates two factors that were already identified by previous studies, i.e. insufficient resources and a lack of effective enforcement practices, and identifies two additional impediments that hitherto received only scant attention, namely implementers’ resistance to the content of a certain policy as well as a lack of proper training possibilities.

KEYWORDS:

• Implementation
• compliance
• drug safety legislation
• EU public policies
• public health
• street-level bureaucracy

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Michael Kaeding, Christoph Klika, Roxana Dürsch, Charline Ulrich, Annika Körner, Stella Malliara and Alexander Hoppe for their valuable support and helpful comments throughout the period of research. Moreover, she is grateful for the assistance of participants and organizers of the 2016 Compliance Conference at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the 2016 ECPR General Conference in Prague.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.