Why the European Commission has Reduced its Enforcement of European Union Law

• In Event: Judicial Politics in Europe

Abstract

Since the founding of the European Union, a primary task of the European Commission has been to serve as the chief enforcer of EU law - "the guardian of the Treaties". Yet, something puzzling has happened over the past decade: Despite evidence of continued (if not mounting) non-compliance by some EU member states, since 2008 the Commission has steadily pared back its launching of infringement actions to enforce EU law against errant member states before the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The cumulative effect of this roll-back has been dramatic, with a decrease of over 80% in infringement cases referred to the ECJ. Deploying the analytic tools of historical institutionalist theory and integrating a quantitative dataset of infringement cases with semi-structured interviews, we assess the causes of declining enforcement of EU rules by the Commission. In particular, we assess arguments that link this shift to the influence of structural constraints imposed by a critical juncture – the 2008-2010 sovereign debt crisis – compared to ones that emphasize the changing strategies of institutional change agents within the Commission itself. This paper assesses the decline in enforcement actions brought by the Commission in the context of broader shifts in EU governance to unpack how the politics of enforcement of European Union (EU) law has evolved over the past decade. We conclude by highlighting the costs of declining legal enforcement in polities that, like the EU, govern principally through law and courts.

Authors

• R. Daniel Kelemen, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

• Tommaso Pavone, University of Arizona