Eu Soft Law In The Member States

This volume analyses, for the first time in European studies, the impact that non-legally binding material (otherwise known as soft law) has on national courts and administration. The study is founded on empirical work undertaken by the European Network of Soft Law Research (SoLaR), across ten EU Member States, in competition policy, financial regulation, environmental protection and social policy. The book demonstrates that soft law is taken into consideration at the national level and it clarifies the extent to which soft law can have legal and practical effects for individuals and national authorities. The national case studies highlight the points of convergence or divergence in the way in which judges and administrators approach soft law, while reflecting on the reasons for and consequences of various national practices. A series of horizontal studies connect this research to the rich literature on new modes of governance, by revisiting traditional theories on soft law, and by reflecting on the potential of such instruments to undermine or to foster rule of law values.

This incisive book evaluates the legal effects of soft law, its foundations and how they behave in some of the most innovative areas of EU law. Combining theory, language and sectoral insights, this comprehensive review uses case studies to shed new light on the three core areas of soft law.

This book offers the first systematic investigation of soft law within the framework of the EC and its use by the European Commission and Council of Ministers.

This pioneering Research Handbook provides an in-depth scholarly overview of the field of soft law, exploring the scope of current thinking in the field as well as proposing future pathways for soft law research. Through theoretical and empirical analyses by established voices in the field, the Research Handbook offers important insights and much-needed clarity into the dynamic and complex nature of soft law. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

Soft law and its role in the enforcement of EU law: Apart from the Treaty infringement procedure there are more and more procedures, mostly laid down in secondary law, by which the EU - often using soft law - ensures Member States' compliance with EU law. This development entails a considerable transforming power. It deserves not only a foundational, mainly competence-oriented analysis of EU soft law, but also a systemic and legal account of these procedures in which it is often EU agencies - instead of the Commission and the European Court of Justice, as provided for in the TFEU - which, largely beyond public attention, interpret EU law and, on this basis, try to enforce it vis-a-vis the Member States.

What does EU law truly mean for the member states? This book presents the first encompassing and in-depth empirical study of the effects of 'voluntaristic' and (partly) 'soft' EU policies in all 15 member states. The authors examine 90 case studies across a range of EU Directives and shed light on burning contemporary issues in political science, integration theory, and social policy. They reveal that there are major implementation failures and that, to date, the European Commission has not been able adequately to perform its control function.

A rising interdependence among the members of international society and of global civil society has led to an increasing demand for governance without government. The new regulatory mode is characterized as a 'soft law' framework. The contributors to this book define soft law in terms of legally non-binding rules, such as recommendations, codes of conduct and declarations, though they acknowledge the difficulty sometimes faced in differentiating between hard and soft law, whose boundaries are, in practice, often blurred. Focussing largely on the European experience, the book shows how soft law in the EU has become an important regulatory tool in traditional policy areas, like state aid, and in new policy areas, especially within EU's employment policy. It also extends the analysis to the international stage, arguing that international institutions, such as the OECD, the UN, the IMF and the World Bank, have for decades used soft law as a means, indeed their only means, of regulating international agreements. Comparisons between the two arenas are then drawn and indicate very different roles for soft law. This book will appeal to scholars of European law and politics as well as those involved with or interested in the policy implications of this mode of governance.

It is clear that the current crisis of the EU is not confined to the Eurozone and the EMU, evidenced in its inability to ensure the compliance of Member States to follow the principles and values underlying the integration project in Europe (including the protection of democracy, the Rule of Law, and human rights). This defiance has affected the Union profoundly, and in a multi-faceted assessment of this phenomenon, The Enforcement of EU Law and Values: Ensuring Member States' Compliance, dissects the essence of this crisis, examining its history and offering coping methods for the years to come. Defiance is not a new concept and this volume explores the richness of EU-level and national-level examples of historical defiance – the French Empty Chair policy–, the Luxembourg compromise, and the FPÖ crisis in Austria - and draws on the experience of the US legal system and that of the integration projects on other continents. Building on this legal-political context, the book focuses on the assessment of the adequacy of the enforcement mechanisms whilst learning from EU integration history. Structured in four parts, the volume studies (1) theoretical issues on defiance in the context of multi-layered legal orders, (2) EU mechanisms of acquis and values' enforcement, (3) comparative perspective on law-enforcement in multi-layered legal systems, and (4) case-studies of defiance in the EU.