In this session, we concentrate on new empirical insights into the dynamics of compliance in some of the key sectors regulated by the EU. A part of the papers focuses on revisiting classical studies or theoretical approaches, to analyze their explanatory power in these new times of crisis. Revisiting Lundqvist’s classical study of air pollution in the USA and Sweden (1980), Duncan Liefferink and Mark Wiering’s paper will analyze the implementation of EU environmental directives (Water Framework Directive, Floods Directive, Air Quality Directive) via previously identified political-institutional variables. Leo Santbergen’s paper will also analyze the Water Framework Directive, but from a different perspective. He will use Kiser and Ostrom’s Institutional Analysis and Development framework to track incremental changes in collective-choice rules over time. Martinsen and Vollaard’s paper will analyze the Patient Rights Directive via the Garbage Can Theory. These various papers will shed light on the usefulness and applicability of previously identified variables and mechanisms in explaining compliance behaviour today. The last two papers in this session will focus on the behaviour of domestic governments in the implementation of EU legislation in changing environments. Zwaan’s paper will examine how a new EU proposal offers a window of opportunity for a domestic government to relax the domestic administrative burden. He will do so by exploring the case of the changing Community Plant Health Regime in the Netherlands. Finally, the paper by Mastenbroek, Spendzharova and Versluis aims at analyzing the impact of the financial-economic crisis, coupled with the advent of populism in various member states, on changing parliamentary involvement during the transposition of EU social policy.