How long to compliance? Escalating infringement proceedings and the diminishing power of special interests

ABSTRACT

Previous research has shown that European governments vary in their responsiveness to the demands of special interests benefiting from non-compliance with European Union law. However, what determines intra-member state variation and the persistence of violations? I argue that the political weight of interest groups can explain delays in changes from the non-compliant status quo to policies consistent with European legislation, and long and escalating infringement proceedings are the result of opportunistic governments maximizing political support by providing particularly influential special interests with continued non-compliance. This argument is empirically supported by an analysis of member states’ decisions to comply before infringement cases reach the Court of Justice of the European Union, the time-to-compliance from the initiation of official infringement proceedings, and the number of stages of these proceedings that a case reaches before finally being settled.

KEYWORDS:

• Compliance
• infringement proceedings
• special interests
• member states
• European Commission
• Court of Justice of the European Union

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the participants of the 2014 Political Economy of International Organizations annual conference, seminars and workshops at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Brigham Young University, and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, as well as two anonymous referees for their constructive criticism and helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Commission had already been in contact with the French government since the mid-1980s before initiating formal compliance proceedings (1994/4466) under Article 258 TFEU on 19 July 1994. It issued a reasoned opinion (SG(95)D/5798) on 5 May 1995, and further referred the case to the CJEU on 4 August 1995 (European Commission 1998). After the Court’s judgment in December 1997, the Commission continued to monitor the practical implementation of the judgment and repeatedly reminded the French authorities of their treaty obligations.

2. For instance, infringement case 1984/0445 lead to France being ordered on 12 July 2005 to pay 316,500 Euro for each day it failed to comply with the Court’s previous ruling that it needed to bring its fisheries policies into line with European legislation (Court of Justice of the European Union 2005). The case was finally closed in November 2006.

3. All models were estimated with and without DG fixed effects and fixed effects for member states and the years infringement proceedings were initiated.