Domestic Veto Players, Commission Monitoring and the Implementation of European Policy

In this chapter, I analyze implementation of European directives by focusing on the interplay between domestic political and administrative actors and the Commission as the “guardian” of European policy. Being unaware of the Commission’s true preferences, the domestic actors have to decide whether and to what extent they will adopt an implementing policy that deviates from the legislative policy as embedded in a directive. The model indicates that, in general, deviations only occur when both domestic actors and the Commission prefer so. In addition, uncertainty about the Commission’s preferences plays a limited role: only when the Commission wants a minor deviation from the European policy, the national actors may have difficulty in shaping a proposal that also accounts of what the Commission wants. Being too ambitious the domestic actors may overestimate the Commission’s true preferences and risk to be challenged.