Is Germany a ‘good European’? German compliance with EU Law

Abstract

It is often asserted that Germany has assimilated the norms and identity of European integration. In this essay, we test this proposition. After reviewing the literature on German EU policy, we argue that a good place to test whether Germany has become a ‘good European’ is in compliance with EU law. An unbiased test of the ‘good European’ hypothesis requires that we examine a body of patterned behavior that is highly constrained or constituted by a set of recognized and accepted norms, both procedural and substantive. We argue that the mutually constitutive nature of norms, identity, and interests finds expression in the highly developed EU legal system. The evolution and legitimacy of EU law meet the criteria for identity formation (and interest construction) for its member states as specified in the literature. An examination of over 1,600 infringement cases (where the Commission sues a member for failing to comply with EU law) between 1962 and 1999 finds that the Germans are average in violation of EU law – no better than the British, Belgians, French, Irish, or Portuguese, and significantly worse than the Danes, Dutch, and Luxembourgers. Thus, we conclude that these data do not support an assertion that Germany is any more ‘European’ than most other members.

Notes

1. Wolfram Hanrieder, West German Foreign Policy, 1948–1967. International Pressures and Domestic Response (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1967); Wolfram Hanrieder, Germany, Europe, America. Forty Years of German Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Waldemar Besson, Die Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Erfahrungen und Masstäbe (Munich: Piper Verlag, 1970); Arnulf Baring, Machtwechsel. Die Aera Brandt-Scheel (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1982); Alfred Grosser, The Western Alliance: European–American Relations since 1945 (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1978); Christian Hacke, Die Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Weltmacht wider Willen, rev. edn. (Frankfurt a.M.: Ullstein, 1997); Christian Hacke, Die Aussenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Von Konrad Adenauer bis Gerhard Schröder, rev. edn. (Frankfurt a.M.: Ullstein, 2003).

2. Thomas Risse-Kappen (ed.), Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Mary Hampton, The Wilsonian Impulse: U.S. Foreign Policy, the Alliance, and German Unification (Westport: Praeger, 1996); Peter Katzenstein (ed.), Tamed Power: Germany in Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Thomas U. Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); John S. Duffield, World Power Forsaken. Political Culture, International Institutions, and German Security Policy after Unification (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); J. Anderson, German Unification and the Union of Europe. The Domestic Politics of Integration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Thomas Banchoff, The German Problem Transformed. Institutions, Politics, and Foreign Policy, 1945–1995 (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1999); Simon Bulmer, Charlie Jeffery and William E. Paterson, Germany's European Diplomacy. Shaping the Regional Milieu (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); Adrian Hyde-Price, Germany and European Order. Enlarging NATO and the EU (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); Sebastian Harnisch and Hanns W. Maull (eds.), Germany as a Civilian Power? The Foreign Policy of the Berlin Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001); Kerry Longhurst, Germany and the Use of Force: The Evolution of German Security Policy, 1990–2003 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004); Volker Rittberger (ed.), German Foreign Policy since Unification. Theories and Case Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).

3. Cited in Katzenstein (ed.), Tamed Power, p.25.

4. David Calleo and Benjamin M. Rowland, America and the World Political Economy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973).

5. Klaus Otto Nass, ‘Der “Zahlmeister” als Schrittmacher?’ Europa Archiv 10 (1976), pp.325–36.

6. James Sperling, ‘German Foreign Policy After Unification: The End of Cheque Book Diplomacy?’, West European Politics 17/1 (January 1994), pp.73–97.

7. Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich, The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Patricia Davis and Peter Dombrowski, ‘The Appetite of the Wolf: German Foreign Assistance for Central and Eastern Europe’, German Politics 6/3 (December 1999), pp.1–22; Randall E. Newnham, Deutsche Mark Diplomacy. Positive Economic Sanctions in German–Russian Relations (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), pp.227ff.

8. Elke Thiel, ‘Die Europäische Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion: Interessen und Bedingungen deutscher Politik’, in Heinrich Schneider, Mathias Jopp and Uwe Schmaltz (eds.), Eine neue deutsche Europapolitik? Rahmenbedingungen – Problemfelder – Optionen (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 2001), pp. 393–420. For an argument on the formation of EMU that emphasizes both material German and different ideational explanations (specifically epistemic communities), see Kathleen R. McNamara, The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

9. Michael G. Huelshoff, ‘Will EMU Come as Intended and on Time?’ in Peter H. Merkl (ed.), The Federal Republic of Germany at Fifty: The End of a Century of Turmoil (London: MacMillan, 1999), pp.299–312; James Sperling, ‘Neither Dominance nor Hegemony’, British Journal of Political Science 31/2 (May 2001), pp.389–425; James Sperling, ‘The Foreign Policy of the Berlin Republic. The Very Model of a Post-Modern Major Power? A Review Essay’, German Politics 12/3 (December 2003), pp.1–34.

10. This formulation is intended to capture the arguments made by conventional and critical constructivists with respect to the relative independence of interests from norms and identity. On this distinction, see Ted Hopf, ‘The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory’, International Security 23/1 (Summer 1998), pp.171–200.

11. Paul J. Bohannan, ‘Differing Realms of Law’, in Paul J. Bohannan (ed.), Law and Warfare (Garden City, NY: American Historial Society, 1967).

12. Audie Klotz, ‘Norms Reconstituting Interests: Global Racial Equality and U.S. Sanctions Against South Africa’, International Organization 49/3 (Summer 1995), pp.451–78; Jeffrey W. Legro, ‘Which Norms Matter? Revisiting the “Failure” of Internationalism’, International Organization 51/1 (Winter 1997), pp.31–63; Jeffrey T. Checkel, ‘The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory’, World Politics 50/2 (January 1998), pp.324–48; Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’, International Organization 52/4 (Autumn 1998), pp.887–917.

13. Banchoff, The German Problem Transformed; Berger, Cultures of Antimilitarism; Duffield, World Power Forsaken; Henning Boekle, Volker Rittberger and Wolfgang Wagner, ‘Constructivist Foreign Policy Theory’, in Volker Rittberger (ed.), German Foreign Policy since Unification. Theories and Case Studies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp.105–37.

14. The notion that the EU is acquiring more sovereignty is one of most troubled of the many goals often ascribed to the Union, as some have noted. See James Caporaso, ‘Regional Integration Theory: Understanding our Past and Anticipating Our Future’, Journal of European Public Policy 5/1 (1998), pp.1–16.

15. David R. Cameron, ‘Transnational Relations and the Development of European Economic and Monetary Union’, in Thomas Risse-Kappen (ed.), Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-State Actors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.37–78; McNamara, The Currency of Ideas.

16. D.C. Kruse, Monetary Integration in Western Europe: EMU, EMS and Beyond (London: Butterworth, 1980).

17. Wilhelm Hankel, ‘Germany: Economic Nationalism in the International Economy’, in Wilfrid Kohl and Giorgio Basevi (eds.), West Germany: A European and Global Power (Lexington: Heath and Company, 1980), pp.21–43.

18. Hans-Eckart Scharrer, ‘The Internal Market’, in Carl-Christoph Schweitzer and Detlev Karsten (eds.), The Federal Republic of Germany and EC Membership Evaluated (New York: St. Martin's, 1990), pp.3–13; William Wallace, ‘Germany's Unavoidable Central Role: Beyond Myths and Traumas’, in Wolfgang Wessels and E. Regelsberger (eds.), The Federal Republic of Germany and the European Community: The Presidency and Beyond (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 1988), pp.276–85; Stephen George, Politics and Policy in the European Community, 3rd edn. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

19. Hanrieder, West German Foreign Policy, 1948–1967, pp.213–22.

20. Simon Bulmer, ‘Germany and European Integration: Toward Economic and Political Dominance?’ in Carl Lankowski (ed.), Germany and the European Community: Beyond Hegemony and Containment? (New York: St. Martin's, 1993), pp.73–100.

21. Simon Bulmer and William E. Paterson, The Federal Republic of Germany and the European Community (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987); Peter Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in West Germany: The Growth of a Semi-Sovereign State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); Simon Green and William E. Paterson, ‘Introduction: Semisovereignty Challenged’, in Simon Green and William E. Paterson (eds.), Governance in Germany: The Semi-sovereign State Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

22. Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘United Germany in an Integrating Europe’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), Tamed Power: Germany in Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997).

23. Gary Marks, ‘Structural Policy and Multilevel Governance in the EC’, in Alan Cafruny and Glenda Rosenthal (eds.), The State of the European Community II (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993), pp.391–411; Liesbet Hooge and Gary Marks, ‘Unraveling the Central State, but How? Types of Multilevel Governance’, American Political Science Review 97/2 (2003), pp.233–43.

24. Sperling, ‘Neither Dominance nor Hegemony’.

25. R. Hrbek and Wolfgang Wessels, ‘Nationale Interessen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Integrationsprozess’, in R. Hrbek and Wolfgang Wessels (eds.), EG-Mitgliedschaft: Ein vitales Interesse der Bundesrepublik Deutschland? (Bonn: Europa Union Verlag, 1984), pp.29–69; Hampton, The Wilsonian Impulse; Mary Hampton and James Sperling, ‘Positive/Negative Identity in the Euro-Atlantic Communities: Germany's Past, Europe's Future?’ Journal of European Integration 24/4 (December 2002), pp.281–301.

26. Bulmer, ‘Germany and European Integration’; Neil Nugent, The Government and Politics of the European Union, 3rd edn. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994); Simon Bulmer and William E. Paterson, ‘Germany in the European Union: Gentle Giant or Emergent Leader?’, International Affairs 72/1 (1996), pp.9–32; Harnisch and Maull, Germany as a Civilian Power?

27. J. Anderson and J. Goodman, ‘Mars or Minerva: A United Germany in a Post-Cold War Europe’, in Robert Keohane, Joseph Nye and Stanley Hoffmann (eds.), After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe, 1989–1991 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp.23–62.

28. William E. Paterson and David Southern, Governing Germany (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991), p.267.

29. Michael G. Huelshoff, ‘Corporatist Bargaining and International Politics’, Comparative Political Studies 25/1 (1992), pp.3–25. Reprinted in Nikolaos Zahariadis (ed.), Theory, Case, and Method in Comparative Politics (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1997); Michael G. Huelshoff, ‘European Integration after the SEA: The Case of the Social Charter’, Political Research Quarterly 46/3 (1993), pp.619–40.

30. Markovits and Reich, The German Predicament, and Katzenstein (ed.), Tamed Power.

31. Ronald L. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt and Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Norms, Identity, Culture and National Security’, in Peter Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp.33–75.

32. Anderson, German Unification and the Union of Europe; Kenneth Dyson and Klaus Goetz, ‘Living with Europe: Power, Constraint and Contestation’, in Kenneth Dyson and Klaus Goetz (eds.), Germany, Europe and the Politics of Constraint (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Green and Paterson, ‘Introduction: Semisovereignty Challenged’.

33. The opposite argument, that interests determine norms and identity, is of course the position taken by institutionalism and interest-based theory, and has been roundly criticized by constructivists. In this instance, changing German interests would account for growing German Euroskepticism, a position explored in the conclusions.

34. In the absence of a clear definition of European preferences, the only direct method that we can imagine would be a comparative analysis of elite statements. The invocation of Europe in foreign policy pronouncements does not tell us anything about the content of European preferences; it only tells us whether Europe is featured in foreign policy pronouncements as a legitimizing feature of public discourse. Moreover, content analysis of speeches is fraught with well-known theoretical, methodological, and measurement shortcomings.

35. Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Jepperson et al., ‘Norms, Identity, Culture and National Security’; Checkel, ‘The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory’.

36. Richard Price and Nina Tannenwald, ‘Norms and Deterrence: The Nuclear and Chemical Weapons Taboos’, in Peter Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp.114–52.

37. Gregory A. Caldeira and James L. Gibson, ‘The Legitimacy of the Court of Justice in the European Union: Models of Institutional Support’, American Political Science Review 89/2 (June 1995), pp.356–77; Walter Mattli and Ann-Marie Slaughter, ‘Law and Politics in the European Union: A Reply to Garrett’, International Organization 49/1 (Winter 1995), pp.183–90; Alec Stone Sweet and Thomas L. Brunell, ‘Constructing a Supranational Constitution: Dispute Resolution and Governance in the European Community’, American Political Science Review 92/1 (March 1998), pp.63–81.

38. Karen J. Alter, ‘The European Union's Legal System and Domestic Policy: Spillover or Backlash?’, International Organization 54/3 (Summer 2000), pp.489–518.

39. Cf Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective Identity Formation and the International State’, American Political Science Review 88/2 (June 1994), pp.384–96; Legro, ‘Which Norms Matter?’; Finnemore and Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamics and Political Change’. For a detailed discussion of these criteria and their applicability to the EU, see Kenneth Abbott et al., ‘The Concept of Legalization’, International Organization 54/3 (Summer 2000), p.405.

40. As discussed below, there are a large number of possible sources of strategic behavior on the part of all actors in the implementation process that may encourage infringement, including member governments which may fail to implement for reasons ranging from the action or inaction of other members to signaling games played with the Commission or Court. All of these potential incentives to avoid implementation are difficult to control, and as noted below we seek only to minimize their likely impact on our data.

41. The Commission generally tries to avoid the use of the Court to compel compliance. Direct, often private, negotiations are common, sometimes followed by public discussion of the failure of members to comply. During the implementation of the SEA, for example, the Commission initiated the publication of biannual ‘Compliance Reports’ that were highly embarrassing to members. Further, and more recently, the Commission has issued reports critical of member compliance with the Stability Pact. Threats of suit are also common, leaving the implementation of infringement cases as the final and most extreme weapon in the Commission's arsenal to force compliance with EU law. For an extended discussion of the infringement process, see Tanja Bo¨rzel, ‘Member State Responses to Europeanization’, Journal of Common Market Studies 40/2 (June 2002), pp.193–214.

42. Haig Simonian, The Privileged Partnership: Franco-German Relations in the European Community, 1969–1984 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); John Gillingham, European Integration, 1950–2002: Superstate or New Market Economy? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

43. Our data do not include cases from after 1999, so analysis of the infringement behavior of the ten states that entered the EU in 2004 is not possible.

44. Interestingly, Börzel (‘Member State Responses to Europeanization’) argues that new members might be expected to face more infringements, due to the difficulty in translating EU law into national legal systems. Our data suggest that this has not been the case for the 1995 entrants, although lag effects cannot be ruled out. If this holds, then the explanations for the differences noted here might well rest in domestic politics. See below.

45. There are a small number of cases brought by members against EU institutions or other members in our original data set, but these were excluded from this analysis.

46. Börzel, ‘Member State Responses to Europeanization’.

47. Heather A.D. Mbaye, ‘Why National States Comply with Supranational Law: Explaining Implementation Infringements in the European Union, 1972–1993’, European Union Politics, pp.259–81.

48. Geoffrey Garrett, ‘The Politics of Legal Integration in the European Union’, International Organization 46/2 (1995), pp.533–60.

49. Börzel, ‘Member State Responses to Europeanization’.

50. Börzel, ‘Member State Responses to Europeanization’.

51. This finding also casts doubt on the utility of relying upon means as a measure of central tendency in these data. It may well be that, given the differences in the growth rates of German and British infringements, a comparison of their means fails to capture the full degree of difference between them.

52. Sperling, ‘The Foreign Policy of the Berlin Republic’.

53. Alan Milward, The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–51 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984); Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Karl Kaltenthaler, Germany and the Politics of Europe's Money (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Andrew Moravcsik and Calypso Nicolaïdis, ‘Negotiating the Treaty of Amsterdam: Interests, Influence, Institutions’, Journal of Common Market Studies 37/1 (1999), pp.59–85; and Huelshoff, ‘European Integration after the SEA’.

54. Christian Reus-Smit, ‘The Constitutional Structure of International Society and the Nature of Fundamental Institutions’, International Organization 51/4 (Autumn 1997), pp.555–90; Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

55. Jepperson et al., ‘Norms, Identity, Culture and National Security’, pp.52 ff.

56. Boeckle et al., ‘Constructivist Foreign Policy Theory’.

57. Thomas U. Berger, ‘Norms, Identity, and National Security in Germany and Japan’, in Peter Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p.328.

58. Christoph Knill and Andrea Lenschow, ‘Compliance within Europe: The Implementation of EU Environmental Policy and Administrative Traditions in Britain and Germany’, Journal of European Public Policy 5/4 (1998), pp.597–616.

59. Mbaye, ‘Why National States Comply with Supra-national Law’.

60. Giovanna Brazzinni, ‘Compliance with EU Law’, Master's Thesis, University of New Orleans, 2005.

61. See in particular Dyson and Goetz, ‘Living with Europe’.