Transposition of EU social policy in the new member states

Abstract

Social Policy in the European Union must be seen in the light of various interactions between institutions, governments and administrative levels. With EU expansion, the process of creating a single unified legislative space and then ensuring necessary implementation of these laws has become undoubtedly more complex. On the other hand, the expansion provides the opportunity to look the process of adopting EU legislation in new ways. This article analyses the transposition of European Union social policy legislation in the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The key question under examination is what level of influence the periphery has on the formation and effectiveness of social policy and what kind of practices are used in the implementation of EU legislation. . In order to account for the varying rate of adoption of EU law at the national level, the article develops several hypotheses about the impact of CEE government preferences and administrative capacity on the pace of transposition in the social policy field. This is done through the analysis of a mass of new data on social policy from 7 member states over a period of 8 years. The results of the quantitative empirical analysis show that government support for European integration and administrative effectiveness has positive and substantial effects on the number of directives transposed in a given period of time. However, government ideological positions, be they on the left or the right of the political spectrum, liberal or conservative, do not affect the adoption of EU social policy legislation in CEE as much as the actual ability of the given government and political-legal system to implement such social policy. As such, EU directives are seen to be used as a political instrument in driving social policy but it is more the effectiveness and speed of adaptation within political systems that determines how far it is adopted and implemented.