European Policies: The Impact of National Administrative Traditions

This article assumes that a central problem for effective implementation of European legislation is the impact of national administrative traditions, since the formal and practical transformation of EU law rests mainly at the national level. The article investigates the interplay of national administrative traditions and European policy implementation. National administrative traditions prevalent in a policy field may differ from country to country. It is argued, that implementation effectiveness depends on the "institutional scope" of European adaptation pressure, which is not only affected by European requirements, but also by the embeddedness of the respective administrative traditions and national capacities for administrative reform. According to the degrees of adaptation pressure, different paths are distinguished, suggesting more or less effective implementation. I Introduction In recent years effective implementation of Community legislation has gained importance on the Commission's agenda. Indeed, increasing attention revealed a widespread implementation deficit in many areas (Commission 1996). Besides the limited resources of the Commission to enforce the implementation of EU policy in the member states, the main difficulty lies in the fact that, apart from competition and antidumping policy, effective implementation of EU legislation is highly dependent on the cooperation of member states, who decide on the necessary organisational, legal and institutional arrangements (Rehbinder and Stewart 1985, 137). This reliance on national administrations implies that the formal transposition and practical application of supranational policies is influenced by administrative traditions