Complying with EU Law: - Ernst & Young

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Section 2Central Oversight and Transposition PerformanceTable 1. Core Executive Coordination in East Central Europe: A SummaryTranspositionPlanningQualityReviewMonitoringandReportingOversight Mechanism Czech Rep Poland Estonia Slovenia HungaryNotifies of new directives + + + + +Controls ministry plans - -/+ + + +Coordinates with parallel planning -/+ -/+ - + +Checks correctness + + -/+ + +Drafts horizontal laws - - - - +Provides drafting assistance - -/+ - - +Central database + + + + +Sends regular reminders - + -/+ + -/+Regular reports to PM or cabinet + - + + -/+Source: own compilation- core executives were involved in additionaloversight tasks which were not supported inthe other three countries or were supportedto a limited extent. In both countries, thecentral coordinators verified whetherministerial transposition plans were feasibleand complete. In Hungary, the Ministry ofJustice also had a strong role in qualityreview – it frequently drafted horizontallegislation and provided assistance toministries with more complex transpositionissues. Finally, in both countries thereexisted comprehensive central monitoringand alert systems. In the remaining threecountries, central coordinators did not havesuch prerogatives or provided a more limitedinput.Do these difference in oversight correlatewith variation in transposition performance?Figure 3 plots the strength of core executiveoversight against the average transpositiondeficit for the period 2005-2009 (seeFigure 3) 1 . The picture is fairly clear. Stateswith weak central oversight performed onaverage worse than states with a strongcentral oversight. The relationship is quitestrong (Pearson coefficient of - 0.83). Thisevidence must, of course, be treated withcaution, but it is interesting to see that thepresent results confirm the findings on theimpact of central coordination by Dimitrovaand Toshkov (2009) who used a differentspecification of core executive coordination.Figure 3. Core Executive Oversight andTransposition Deficit in East Central EuropeAverage non-transposed directives 2005-200940.0030.0020.0010.00Czech RepEstoniaR Sq Linear = 0.692PolandSlovenia4.00 6.00 8.00Core executive oversightSource: own compilationHungary
Section 3Departmental Oversight and EULaw TranspositionTransposition of EU directives is in the handsof national ministries, but ministries are notunitary actors. At the very least, ministerialdepartments house two types of actors:political appointees (ministers and deputyministers) and bureaucrats (directoratesand units). It is often assumed that ministersact as principals who formulate policy, whilebureaucrats are agents who implement it(Huber 2000; Strom 2000).In practice, and in EU transposition in particular,the picture is more complex. The extent towhich political appointees control policy-makingvaries across different settings and it is notunusual for civil servants to take active part inboth policy formulation and implementation.What is crucial, however, is that insideministerial departments there normally existsome individual or collective actors who makepolicy commitments (ministerial principals)and lower-level actors who implement suchcommitments (ministerial agents).If this is so, then one can expect that thedelegation problems which were discussed atthe start of the previous chapter will also belikely to arise inside national ministries. Lowerlevelministerial actors - typically officialsworking in line departments and sections – may‘shirk’ on the transposition tasks delegatedfor implementation. Again, such behaviourmay be deliberate or non-deliberate – it mayresults from divergent preferences or problemsof problematic communication, insufficientexpertise or scarce resources. In either case,unresponsiveness of lower-level officials mayresult in problems of delayed transposition ornon-transposition.Like at the central level, oversight may help tomitigate such risks. Indeed, as we will see in therest of this section, national ministries set upcoordinating units whose role is to monitor theprocess of transposition at the departmentallevel.Operationalization of DepartmentalOversightTo map the strength of oversight, this reportexamines rules-in-use governing the processof transposition inside ministries, and inparticular the role of coordinating units suchas horizontal legislative services, EU unitsand minister’s offices. Rules are defined asshared understandings regarding what actionis required, prohibited or permitted. Theconstellation of rules-in-use is examined inthree dimensions: transposition planning, legalreview and monitoring of deadlines (see Table 2).With regard to planning, a key questionis whether there exists an institutionalmonitor with responsibility for coordinatingtransposition programmes inside theministry. The monitor may have the right tocheck if draft ministerial positions identifytransposition measures; assign responsibilityfor transposition of new EU measures toline directorates; send requests for planned17
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Page 5 and 6: ContentsAcknowledgments . . . . . .
Page 7: Executive SummaryEach year EU membe
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Page 26 and 27: Conclusionattention to how line dep
Page 28 and 29: ReferencesAlchian, A.A. and Demsetz
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