Compliance Promotion in the European Union

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The EU is a regulatory state which typically uses legislation to address joint societal problems that the member states cannot solve on their own. Member state governments and administrations are responsible for implementing the rules coming from Brussels. However, EU implementation is often problematic, with many member states falling short of complying with EU rules in a timely and correct manner. To address such problems, the EU has developed an extensive set of instruments for compliance promotion, aimed at preventing and redressing implementation problems by engaging supranational actors (in the vertical arena), member states in their role as peers (in the horizontal arena), and domestic actors such as national courts, agencies, and NGOs (in the domestic arena). This book maps the EU’s compliance promotion architecture as it has developed over time and analyses its effectiveness. It does so by synthesizing the extant but scattered academic literature on the individual instruments in the three arenas, such as the infringement procedure, European administrative networks, and decentralized enforcement. This analysis is embedded in a quantitative and qualitative diagnosis of EU implementation and an integrated escalation model for compliance promotion in the three arenas. This model is rooted in three theoretical paradigms: managerialism, constructivism, and rationalism. The book finishes with policy recommendations for strengthening both EU implementation and the EU’s compliance promotion architecture and with an agenda for further research on these topics.</jats:p>