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In this article, we trace Germany's recent reform (and its precursors) seeking to remedy precarious working conditions in the meat sector. Focusing on an extreme case of labour exploitation, and asking how unique it is, allows us to uncover which institutional features of EU Member States condition the liberalization effects of negative integration. We thereby contribute to the literature on Europeanization, which has mainly emphasized weak industrial relations to account for the German meat industry's reliance on cheap migrant labour. Complicated enforcement structures, demanding requirements of administrative cooperation, and the complexities of an evolving case law, we argue, further contributed to the precarious conditions of migrant workers in Germany. Major COVID outbreaks in slaughterhouses created the political momentum for reform which specifically addresses this administrative side of labour protection, but remains limited to the meat sector – despite similar patterns of labour exploitation elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the implementation of European case law at the bureaucratic frontline of European member states. Theoretically, insights from street‐level implementation studies are combined with judicial impact research. Empirically, we compare how EU rules on free movement and cross‐border welfare are applied in practice in Denmark, Austria and France. We find that when applying EU rules in practice, street‐level bureaucrats are confronted with a world of legal complexity, consisting of ambiguous rules, underspecified concepts and a recent judicial turn by the Court of Justice of the European Union. In order to manage complexity, street‐level bureaucrats turn to their more immediate superiors for guidance. As a consequence, domestic signals shape the practical application of EU law. Despite bureaucratic discretion and many country differences, domestic signals create uniform, restrictive outcomes of EU law in all three cases. Thus we show that there is considerable room for politics in EU implementation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union ( EU) has to reconcile free movement rights with national welfare states. Case law of the European Court of Justice ( ECJ) has broadened rights to welfare of economically inactive or marginally active EU citizens. Applying the Court's jurisprudence, which is vague and specific at the same time, poses serious challenges for national administrations. Vague criteria for individual assessments have to be translated into mass procedures. And legislative corrections of the case law are often foreclosed given the EU's skewed separation of powers and the over-constitutionalization of European law, where crucial policy choices are taken by the Court's Treaty interpretation. We compare the British and the German approaches and show that ECJ case law impacts through different channels, but triggers similar challenges for national administrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to explain how the European Union (EU) - by challenging national defence offsets - managed to move into a highly sensitive policy area under formerly exclusive Member State competence. Whereas major accounts of integration depict defence policy as a least likely case, our process-tracing analysis shows that the EU's recent challenge of defence offsets was a case of supranational self-empowerment. We theorize two consecutive strategies of judicial politics, which the Commission employed at different policy stages to overcome opposition from Member States and defence firms against domestic policy change: judicialized law-making and opportunistic enforcement. Both strategies depend on three scope conditions: expansive case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), its fit with policy priorities of the Commission and a credible threat of follow-up litigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European regulatory networks ( ERNs) play a central role in the formulation, deliberation, and implementation of EU policies and have, thus, become objects of investigation in a fast-growing scholarly literature. We identify two shortcomings - one conceptual, one theoretical - in the literature on ERNs: First, we argue that the principal-agent approach, which is conventionally used to conceptualize ERNs, overlooks and even misrepresents central features of ERNs. By introducing and applying the 'orchestration' framework to ERNs we demonstrate that it better captures the specific characteristics of ERNs. Secondly, explanations for the choice and design of ERNs have treated functional and power-based accounts as mutually exclusive. We argue instead that explanatory leverage can be gained by combining these two accounts by specifying their respective domains of application. While functional accounts enable us to illuminate why and under what circumstances ERNs are created in the first place (rather than EU agencies or delegation to the Commission), political accounts help us to shed light on variation in the design of ERNs (i.e. why actors opt for rather close or loose network structures). We illustrate the explanatory value-added of such an approach through two brief case studies on EU telecommunications and competition policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium item belongs to a section headed: SYMPOSIUM: CONVENTIONAL WISDOMS UNDER CHALLENGE – REVIEWING THE EU’S DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT IN TIMES OF CRISIS, which also includes Integration without Representation? The European Parliament and the Reform of Economic Governance in the EU by Berthold Rittberger (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12185), Parliaments in the Euro Crisis: Can the Losers of Integration Still Fight Back? by Katrin Auel and Oliver Höing (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12186), ‘European Elections are Second‐Order Elections’: Is Received Wisdom Changing? by Richard Corbett (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12187), From ‘Sleeping Giant’ to Left–Right Politicization? National Party Competition on the EU and the Euro Crisis by Eric Miklin (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12188), No Demos? Identities and Public Spheres in the Euro Crisis by Thomas Risse (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12189), From Regulatory State to a Democratic Default by Giandomenico Majone (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12190) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]