13 - Implementation across countries and Directives

Summary

In the previous chapters, we have analysed the domestic impact of our six Directives in detail and we have provided an overview of a number of other aspects of the implementation process, notably the voluntary reforms that were prompted by the Directives, the EU Commission's policy against non-compliant member states, and the effect of the Directives on domestic patterns of state-society relations. In this chapter, we will provide a cross-country, cross-Directive summary of the adaptation requirements that had to be overcome and of the implementation outcomes finally reached.

Costs and overall misfit in comparative perspective

The system of categorising costs outlined in Chapter 2 is indicative of the maximum potential costs for our six Directives outlined in Table 13.1 (with the numbers referring to the cost categories listed in Chapter 2).

The only Directive in our sample that is marked by a potential for comparatively much higher long-term costs is the Parental Leave Directive since more men might take up their right in the future. We did not take this into account in our analysis of factors that potentially affect the transposition performance, since the interviews revealed that politicians and experts either did not regard the longer-term perspective as likely to diverge significantly from the present or did not include this in their short-term evaluation.

What were the costs that our six Directives actually created in the fifteen EU member states? Table 13.2 lists the four potential levels of costs and the number of cases found in each.