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This papa seeks to develop a new understanding of the implementation of EU policies as a mixed process of both Europeanization and domestication. While some scholars equate the implementation of EU policies with Europeanization, this fails to capture the dominance of national factors and the relative impact of EU policies. The implementation of EU policies is best conceptualized as a blend of effective EU influence over domestic policy choices in a given policy area - defined as Europeanization - and of domestic choices of non-prescribed or non-recommended policy options in the same policy area - which is termed domestication. Domestication and Europeanization usually work as complementary forces. These concepts are employed for art analysis of the implementation of the 1990 EU Directive on Access to Environmental information in Ireland, Britain and Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central problem for improving the implementation effectiveness of European legislation lies in the impact of national administrative traditions. The dependence on national administrations for implementing European policies implies that the formal transposition and practical application of supranational policies are crucially influenced by administrative traditions prevalent in a certain policy field, which may differ substantially from country to country. Focusing on the implementation of EU environmental policy in Britain and Germany, it is the objective of this article to investigate the interplay of national administrative traditions and European policy implementation in closer detail. The main argument is that the extent to which administrative traditions affect implementation effectiveness is less dependent on the 'real' costs of adaptation than on the level of embeddedness of existing structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the EU Presidency plays a more important role than is generally assumed. It is not so much that the incumbent Presidency may try to 'push through' legislation close to the national interests but that it has an important role in fostering the Europeanization of national environmental policy-making. Holding the Presidency creates strong pressures to achieve agreement and fosters a subtle but important learning process about the European and national dimensions of policy problems. This is one of the main reasons why national objectives and 'styles' tend more often to give way to 'European thinking' about environmental policy when the Presidency is held. National differences in running the Presidency become more apparent during informal Councils which do not make decisions directly resulting in legislation. It will be shown that there appears to be little difference overall in the way the British and German governments run their respective Presidencies despite considerable differences in their national 'styles' of environmental policy- making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]