Sunday, March 16, 2014
Congressional B (Omni Shoreham)
Economic integration is the most advanced area of cooperation inside the European Union (EU). Despite the significant authority that has been deferred to the supranational institutions, policies are de facto enforced by state or sub-state public or delegated agencies. This shift of decision making short of enforcement powers to the EU-level creates a paradox: in areas in which integration is most advanced, policy implementation may be least effective. The reason for this is that the EU cannot directly enforce policies while national enforcement authorities have lost full control over policy making and become policy takers whose nationally defined features do no longer match the changed policy demands. In this setting we expect national administrations to face competing demands that emerge from on the one hand adopting functions to cross-border dynamics, while on the other maintaining a coherent administrative apparatus between different state institutions. Thus, resulting cooperation might either move towards a supranationalized and centralised enforcement effort or take the shape of interface management. To examine the question of emerging coordination systems, we analyse changes in the cooperation of labour inspectorates in 15 member states between 2000 and 2010 and the introduction of new administrative cooperation tools (IMI). The aim of the paper is to describe the emerging coordination system and explain its main features based on the incrementally carved out equilibrium between the competing demands.
