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Where Have the Guardians Gone? The EU’s Shifting Politics of Legal Enforcement (Pre-Recorded)

Thu, September 30, 8:00 to 9:30am PDT (8:00 to 9:30am PDT), TBA

Abstract

In the European Union, the European Commission is the sole supranational actor responsible for enforcing EU law against noncompliant member states. The Commission exercises its role as “Guardian of the Treaties” by launching infringement against recalcitrant governments and bringing them before the European Court of Justice. This paper reveals a puzzling decline in the Commission’s exercise of its infringement power since 2004 and leverages a multi-method research design to explain the EU’s shifting politics of enforcement. Relying on a longitudinal dataset of infringements from 1978 to 2019, we demonstrate that the decline in infringements cannot be explained by improved state compliance, increased enforcement by national judiciaries, or a decrease in EU legislative output. We then leverage semi-structured interviews with EU officials to trace how the Commission’s retreat from vigorous enforcement was prompted by the politicization and presidentialization of the Commission: That is, the increasing control exercised by political appointees over the infringement procedure, alongside the centralization of policymaking within the Commission Presidency. As the Commission’s political leadership came to prioritize pursuit of its policy agenda, Commission civil servants were dissuaded from launching infringements that might upset member states in the Council and derail the Commission leadership’s legislative priorities. These findings underscore the unintended consequences of calls for a more political and less technocratic Commission: Whatever its virtues, politicization may have weakened the Commission’s resolve to enforce EU law and fulfill its traditional role as the “Guardian of the Treaties."

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