The EU and the implementation of international law: the case of ‘sea-level bureaucrats’

Abstract

Is the European Union (EU) influencing national bureaucracies' implementation of international law? This paper reports findings from interviews with ship inspectors and their superiors about European training aimed at harmonization. The maritime sector's highly institutionalized global regime may constitute an unlikely case for European influence over national bureaucrats for historical, institutional and economic reasons. This examination of ‘sea-level bureaucrats’ shows how European executive capacity is acquired at the national level even in this sector, adding to our insights on implementation and compliance in European governance. We find evidence that inspections seem Europeanized, and together with research on other sectors, this indicates the development of a new, international, multi-level administrative order with stronger traits of direct implementation. In it, the EU may have developed into an interpretative filter for national implementation of global maritime safety rules.

Keywords:

• Bureaucracies
• European Union
• implementation
• maritime safety
• street-level

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author thanks Morten Egeberg, Marianne Riddervold, Meng-Hsuan Chou, participants at the Norwegian Political Science Conference 2010 and three anonymous reviewers for comments on previous versions of this paper.

Notes

The Minister for Trade and Industry emphasized this in the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, stating that the Norwegian maritime cluster employs around 10,000 people and stands for a value creation of approximately 12 billion euros each year (de Lange 2010).

SI0XX refers to ship inspectors, D0XX to NMD interviewees.

Directive 2009/16/EC, OJ L 131, 28.5.2009, pp. 57–100.

Interview DG MOVE official.