Making Dead Letters Live: Strategies to Improve the Effectiveness of EU Legislation in Central and Eastern Europe

Treib, Oliver, and Falkner, Gerda. (2007) Making Dead Letters Live: Strategies to Improve the Effectiveness of EU Legislation in Central and Eastern Europe. In European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 2007 (10th), May 17-19, 2007, pages 26, Montreal, Canada.

Abstract

As many empirical studies have shown, non-compliance with EU legislation has already been a significant phenomenon within the EU15. With the accession of twelve new Member States since 2004, all of which had to align their legal and administrative systems to the acquis communautaire within a very short time frame, the compliance issue has become even more pressing. Against this background, it is the aim of this paper to take a closer look at how four new Member States from Central and Eastern Europe fare in implementing EU legislation and how possible compliance problems could be remedied in the future. The paper presents findings from a comparative project on the transposition, enforcement and application of EU legislation from the fields of working time and equal treatment in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia. The results show that while transposition performance is relatively good, all four countries are marked by significant problems in application and enforcement. On the basis of intense focus group sessions involving practitioners from the four countries, the paper presents a set of strategies to improve the current state of affairs and concludes with some remarks on the chances for these options to be actually put into practice in the new Member States.