Implementation and enforcement of European Community law : the role of the European Commission in infringement proceeding

Abstract

At the beginning of the twenty first century, the problem of implementation and enforcement of the law is as complex as never before. The processes accompanying such a phenomenon have become increasingly valid and relevant for the ongoing discourse between academics and policy-makers. The debate has spilled over to the role of the internationalisation of economies and the contributions of of globalisation in the creation of complex societies flooded by enormous information flows, and confronted with high-end technologies designed to deal with the challenges of specialised knowledge. The last few decades have been marked by an increasing number of issues being allocated to, or addressed by, international and supranational levels of authority. This pattern has generally been explained on the basis that the capacity of individual nation states to address the issues in question is no longer adequate or accepted; in economic language for example, that there are negative externalities, which cannot satisfactorily be internalised within the nation state, or because there are perceived to be advantages of scale, influence and increased effectiveness in action beyond the level of the state. A second trend at least within western political systems is that of localisation, in the sense of the emergence of stronger local and regional politics, with a renewed interest in more direct democratic administration and participation under the influence of republican and communitarian political theories. One of the factors, which these two apparently divergent developments have in common, is that they illustrate the erosion of the assumption that the nation state is the primary and the most appropriate locus of authority for political decision-making and policy implementation. The increasing interdependence of nations, both as a result of voluntarily undertaken international obligations and the establishment of international institutions; of varying degrees of power pose a powerful challenge to the claim that national governments are best placed to decide upon and to regulate most matters of political importance. The third trend involves a more general fragmentation of political power, and the dissolution of boundaries between private and public spheres of regulation and control. It concerns the evolution of a concept of governance, which transcends the more traditionally conceived private/public divide, and which challenges previous assumptions about the locus of political and economic authority. The focus is being shifted on outcomes, by asking questions whether a decision taken or a policy formulated at a given level is likely to be effective in dealing with the issue it has been designed to address, when it is implemented at a different level. Such an approach concerns the capacity of particular levels of government or political organisations to address a number of issues. The notion of effectiveness itself points to the examination as to whether a given level of government is in its best position to assess, to understand and to act on the matter in question. A further question for examination is the notion of willingness, i.e. the degree of readiness of particular political or government fora to take action in certain matter of polity. [...]