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The purpose of this paper is to answer the question as to why Germany is cautious towards a faster enlargement of the euro area. The usual explanation focuses on concerns that some of the candidate countries are not economically ready to adopt the common currency and their membership could destabilize the monetary union. However, such an approach does not take into account other factors that may influence Germany’s reluctance to speed up the enlargement process. One of them is the conviction that the existing division of integration does not translate into economic costs and a long-term political cleavage in the EU. Another argument explaining Germany’s position is their doubt about the economic policy preferences of the candidates which may prove to be crucial in the upcoming reform of the euro area governance. Some of them can drift towards more interventionism and support for the debtors’ positions which is at odds with German interest.

This chapter adopts both a historical and a comparative approach in studying EU enlargement. The aim here is to identify ‘whether' and ‘when' a country joins the Union, with an emphasis on the currently ongoing enlargement process in the Western Balkans. It starts with an overview of the conceptual and theoretical framework for studying and explaining EU enlargement. It then reviews how EU enlargement has proceeded over time by looking at its successful and unsuccessful cases, with a particular focus on the motivations and explanations associated with each of them. The chapter considers the successful rounds of enlargement, the reluctant and the awkward cases, and the ongoing (laggard) Southeastern Enlargement round. It discusses the main EU enlargement dilemmas and their implications for the current (unfinished) enlargement round in the Western Balkans in detail.

International audience

External differentiation refers to the various relationships the EU has with neighbouring countries with which it has a formal agreement. There is a general principle that the more access associated countries have to the EU Single Market, the more regulatory alignment they must accept. There is, however, no standard formula for achieving this. The only standardised arrangement is the European Economic Area and even that varies in detail for the individual states. Otherwise the arrangements differ according to concerns about sovereignty, sectoral interests, regulatory styles, power politics and the salience of particular issues and the overall trajectory of associated states towards or away from the EU. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

This paper examines how far and under what conditions experimentalist governance (XG), defined as a recursive process of provisional goal setting and revision, based on comparative review of implementation in different local contexts, may be an effective and legitimate means of responding to diversity among EU member states, in comparison both to conventional uniform regulation (UR) and to differentiated integration (DI). The paper tackles this question through a comparative analysis of EU regulatory governance in two major policy domains, where the dilemma of how to accommodate national diversity has arisen prominently: electricity and banking. Our findings show that in these two cases the conjunction of high interdependence with high uncertainty has resulted in the emergence of a distinctive type of XG architecture, combining synchronic uniformity with diachronic revisability. Under these conditions, uniform rules and practices can be accepted as effective and legitimate by EU Member States, provided they are applied in contextually sensitive ways and regularly revised on the basis of implementation experience, through deliberative review processes in which national officials themselves participate. Our findings thus suggest that far from uniformity and experimentalism being antithetical to one another, diachronic experimentalism may be a necessary condition for synchronic uniformity of regulation within a heterogeneous polity like the EU. Our findings on EU banking regulation, where non-euro Member States may opt out of the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), but where both the SSM and the European Banking Authority (EBA) operate along experimentalist lines, further suggests that XG and DI may be complementary, but asymmetrically so, in that the latter depends on the former to accommodate diversity within and across Member States, but not vice versa. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

This report develops two sets of scenarios on the future use of differentiation and flexibility in the European Union. The exercise is based on an in-depth analysis of the relevant literature and empirical evidence on scenario-planning, the forecasting and foresight of key future trends, and differentiated integration and flexibility. The first set of scenarios, ‘European landscapes 2035’, presents four narrative scenarios on future internal integration: ‘Highland Europe’ (uniform integration), ‘Mountainous Europe’ (differentiated integration), ‘Lowland Europe’ (uniform disintegration), and ‘Archipelago Europe’ (differentiated disintegration). The second set of scenarios, ‘Love thy neighbour 2035’, presents three analytical scenarios on future external integration: ‘Extended family’ (EU enlargement), ‘Close-knit community’ (external integration), and ‘Good fences make good neighbours’ (external disintegration). The two sets of scenarios offer to policymakers, experts, and citizens a useful tool to think about the future of the EU, stimulate an informed debate on desirable visions, threats, opportunities, and strategic choices, and assist the design the appropriate institutional, legal, and political solutions.

There is now an abundant conceptual and empirical literature on differentiated integration in the EU. However, what are academic experts’ more political and normative views on the matter? This paper enlarges our knowledge about how academic experts perceive of DI in general, as well as about questions relating to external DI, enlargement, and the EU’s future. From the analysis emerge four main findings. First, there continues to be very strong support for the idea of a flexible Europe, though there remain strong differences in support between different types of DI. Second, a large majority of our experts considered that DI should not be allowed in all EU policies areas, not least the Rule of Law. Third, the majority of respondents support external DI, however not unconditionally. Fourth, and finally, despite the overall support for DI in many areas of policy, experts in their majority thought that uniform integration would better allow the EU to realise its goals, and so DI appears as a second-best which is supported when uniform integration does not seem politically feasible.

Enhanced Cooperation in the EU Abstract The subject of the master's thesis is the concept of enhanced cooperation in the EU. It is one of the key tools for achieving differentiated integration, which is often perceived as the future of the European Union. The thesis is aiming to provide a comprehensive overview of the rules governing enhanced cooperation and its current use in practice. The evaluation of the enhanced cooperation mechanism is carried out mainly by comparison with the intergovernmental cooperation, which is often used as a replacement for enhanced cooperation. The master thesis offers a picture of enhanced cooperation as a mechanism that is imperfect but still provides a better alternative to intergovernmental cooperation. Recommendations for specific steps to improve the current legislation state and therefore to increase the use of enhanced cooperation have been formulated in the conclusion of this thesis.

The present paper provides an overview of past, present, and proposed models of differentiated integration (DI) in the European Union. First, it reviews the quantitative and qualitative evidence on the historical use of differentiation from 1958 to 2020, finding that it is a common but relatively secondary feature of European integration and that the three idealtypical models identified in the literature (multi-speed, multi-tier, and multi-menu) are deployed in an eclectic, versatile, and constrained manner, which could be termed ‘reluctant differentiation’. Second, it examines and assesses a sample of 21 reform proposals covering the full range of possibilities for the future development of the EU: from total disintegration to a federal union, from maximum uniformity to sustained differentiation, the use of different differentiation models, and other design elements. It finds that differentiation plays an important role in most proposals and may represent an essential tool to increase their effectiveness, popular support, and legal-political feasibility, even though any radical shift toward a more differentiated Europe is unlikely to be implemented.

The present manual offers to policymakers and practitioners a comprehensive and ready-to-use toolkit for the design, choice, and assessment of differentiated integration scheme. On the one hand, it distils the policy-relevant insights of academic research on differentiation and other forms of flexibility in a clear, synthetic, and accessible form, with thematic suggestions for further readings and evidence-based recommendations. On the other hand, it provides access to a range of useful tools and resources: an evaluation framework; a checklist of recommendations; and a series of thematic policy briefs and fact sheets; five quantitative datasets on the empirical patterns of differentiated integration and the preferences of relevant publics; a comprehensive bibliography; an experts’ directory; and links to key external sources. The manual is conceived as a digital ‘living document’ which will remain accessible for the next 10 years and will continue to be developed and updated on a regular basis.

According to the Interlaken principles, relations with third countries should not slow down the process of integration; compromise the EU’s decision-making autonomy; or share power with non-members. Access to the benefits of the EU Internal Market is conditional, with partner states expected to assume key elements of the acquis communautaire. In practice, there is not a linear relationship. The EU prefers structured, institutionalised arrangements conforming to existing models and encompassing all aspects of the relationship. Yet the existing models themselves, including those in Michel Barnier’s ‘ladder’ are themselves the product of ad hoc deals and often far from comprehensive. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

The aim of this article is to present a general forecast of the development of processes of legal integration in the European Union in the coming years. The European Union is in ‘multi-crisis’, which may force the member states to adopt an organizational development scenario based on differentiation. The selectivity of this differentiation is understood both in terms of the heterogeneity of integration in some areas and the reduction in the number of states fully participating in integration. An analysis of the current trends and solutions proposed and taken by EU decision-makers shows that the EU legal system is not subject to federalization, but in fact the tendency to deepen integration does not conflict with intergovernmentalism. The multiplicity of problems resulting from the multi-crisis will most likely require the deepening of the current differentiation mechanisms and the emergence of new ones.

Differentiated integration (DI) in the European Union (EU) has mainly been understood as variation in participation in common policies. But DI also has implications for the nature and functioning of the EU as a polity. While temporary DI may facilitate deeper integration, permanent DI is liable to increase transaction costs and fragmentation. However, little is known about how such alternatives are assessed by decision-makers in the member states. This article uses novel quantitative and qualitative data to shed light on this question. It looks at the explanatory role of various types of opt-outs and at member states’ dependence, capacity, and identity. We find that temporary and permanent differentiation are assessed differently in the member states but neither alternative is clearly preferred. Long-term involuntary opt-outs are related to negative assessments of both forms of DI. Surprisingly, voluntary opt-outs do not seem to lead to more positive assessments of DI. We also find that the temporary DI is preferred in smaller member states, while support for permanent DI is higher in larger member states. Finally, we find differences in the effects of dependency, capacity, and identity between older and newer member states. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

The present report makes an overview of the progresses made so far in Work Package 5. At this initial stage, the main aim was to develop a new coding for core state powers in EU legislation. Such coding serves the purpose of expanding EUDIFF1 through new information on core state powers integration. The report is structured as follows: after a brief introduction, Section I presents a tripartite categorization of core state powers modes of integration. Section II tests the plausibility of the proposed categorisations through an empirical analysis that explores primary legislation from 1952 to 2016. Section III discusses the possibility of a more fine-grained distinction.

This paper studies two areas of Core State Powers (CSP), i.e. the EU budget and Justice and Home Affairs. The two cases have the aim to reconstruct how Differentiated Integration (DI) has developed over time in these two specific domains. While the aim is the same for both cases, the way the cases are structured is substantially different. This is due to various reasons. First, the politics of the EU budget go back to the early days of the EU, while JHA is a post-Maastricht feature. This implies that the budget case study concentrates on a much longer time span. Second, DI in the budget interests several member states, while in JHA it is a phenomenon circumscribed to fewer members. Finally, the politics of the budget are decided through intergovernmental negotiations, while JHA is a rather supranationalised policy that relies a lot on secondary legislation and EU executive bodies such as EU agencies. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains

This report provides a general overview of the dataset under construction for WP5, EUDIFF-RES, focusing on differentiated integration in core state powers (CSP) in the European Union (EU). The report explains the rationale behind the data collection and provides an outline of the information gathered so far. The aim of the report is to make the dataset easily accessible to anyone who wishes to utlise it for further research.

The paper summarises different patterns of differentiation and reintegration in core state powers during the post-Maastricht period, based on the EUDIFF-RES dataset. Moreover, it offers a theoretical framework able to explain the observed variation. The framework is further tested by means of short empirical illustrations taken from different policy areas. Overall, the EUDIFF-RES dataset substantially contributes to our understanding of CSP differentiated integration by revealing that the behaviour of states vis-a-vis core state powers varies greatly according to the kind of resource, as well as the costs and opportunities attached to it.

This paper analyses the extent to which EU directives allow for variation in the way that member states implement them. Such room for ‘flexible implementation’ may be used to overcome conflict during decision-making or to accommodate diversity in conditions within member states. The analysis is based on an original dataset of 164 directives adopted between 2006 and 2015, which are coded for the discretion they offer to member states. In addition to the overall level of discretion in directives, the paper also zooms in on five specific types of discretion. Based on these data, patterns of discretion across policy areas and different types of directives are explored. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

This paper reports the findings of a comparative analysis of differentiated integration (DI) versus flexible implementation (FI). It finds overall support for our expectation that both DI and FI address international heterogeneity among EU member states and the complications in decision-making and compliance that derive from it. In addition, differentiation typically exempts individual member states in a particular situation (such as geographical location or treaty-based opt-outs) and reflects particularly high conflict in the legislative process. By contrast, our expectation that the EU uses DI in areas of core state powers, whereas FI is the instrument of choice in less politicized, market-related policy domains, receives mixed support. Finally, we observe no significant difference in the compliance effects of DI and FI. Neither instrument is sufficient to overcome the non-compliance threat emanating from imposing uniform legislation on a heterogeneous membership. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

EU governance in the field of agricultural biotechnology, especially authorizations for commercial use and cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), has always been an exemplary field of intense policy controversies leading to regulatory impasses. Notwithstanding repeated attempts to improve the functioning of the regime, the longstanding problems with insufficient democratic legitimacy of EU-level GM product approvals in comitology decision making have persisted, affecting the overall profile of the policy. This paper appraises the most recent reform of the GMO regime through a case study of the implementation of the Opt-out Directive 2015/412, which returned powers over GMO cultivation to the national level, from the perspective of differentiated integration (DI) in relation to other regulatory approaches, namely experimentalist governance (XG) and uniform regulation (UI). In order to do so, the paper addresses the conceptualization of the GMO regime, its successes and pitfalls, the origins of the DI reform, and national implementation in six Member States. The regulatory appraisal of the impact of the reform on the accommodation of diversity within the EU is carried out through the lens of the functioning of the Internal Market and GMO approvals through the comitology voting system. The paper establishes that the DI approach introduced by the 2015 Opt-out Directive failed to effectively foster accommodation of diversity in the GMO regime. It argues that this was due to the atypical mode of DI which was introduced in the system, and lack of exploitation of the opportunities offered by XG within the GMO regime. The paper shows that the reform reinforced asymmetries between Member States and did not fully address key problems of the GMO regime, including effective deliberation in comitology committees, pertinent national-level issues, and the need to revise the regulation in view of development of New Plant Breeding Techniques (NPBTs). Finally, the paper outlines three possible scenarios in the present situation. It argues that the most promising scenario would involve a combination of more radical DI and more extensive use of XG, including a complete return of decision-making powers over cultivation to the Member States and opening up debates about GMO authorizations to socio-economic and ethical-cultural factors beyond scientific risk assessment.

To prevent differentiated integration from being itself a source of unfairness, the report identifies certain substantive and procedural conditions that it should meet to remain fair. Substantively, no member states should be excluded from a policy if they would become worse off than they currently are as a result, nor should a state be allowed to opt out of a policy or be exempted from meeting certain standards if that would render the participating or complying states worse off than they are. Procedurally, both exclusions and exemptions should be agreed either unanimously by representatives of all member states when negotiating the accession of new members or amending the Treaties, or result from a member state choosing not to participate in enhanced cooperation by at least nine member states. Political party actors express mixed views of differentiated integration. While some view it as a pragmatic way forward for the EU, others worry about its negative implications for political equality, solidarity, and unity. Party actors from poorer and less integrated member states are generally more sceptical about differentiated integration than actors from older and richer member states because they worry about being left behind. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains

This article aims to investigate the character of transatlantic security relations in Africa: How can it be characterized? Have they become weaker or stronger over the past decade? How can this development be explained? As NATO has not yet been heavily engaged on the African continent, it is prudent to study the relations between the EU and the US. Africa has been of concern to the EU (and its member states) for decades due to its geographical closeness and historic bonds. Since 2001, for both Europe and the US, Africa has become a region of increasing security concern due to the threat of international terrorism—for Europe, we can also add the migration concern. The European side of this relationship has also been largely dominated by France, making the transatlantic security cooperation in Africa essentially about French-American relations. As France has taken the lead regarding Europe’s security and defense engagement in Africa, increasingly with the support of other EU member states and associated non-members, this bilateral relationship is more than simply cooperation between two states. By applying a framework that understands EU security and defense policy as a process increasingly characterized as a differentiated and flexible integration under French leadership, the development of the Franco-US security relations in Africa must be understood as an expression of the transatlantic security relations in this region. Making Sense of the European Side of the Transatlantic Security Relations in Africa

This report studies two areas of Core State Powers (CSP), i.e., Defence and Monetary Policy. The two cases have the aim to reconstruct how Differentiated Integration (DI) has developed over time in these two specific domains. While the aim is the same for both cases, the way the cases are structured is substantially different. The development of European defence is analysed under three key aspects. Firstly, the policy is analysed considering the resources invested for its development. Second, each sub-area of defence is analysed in relation to who is charged with the responsibility of deploying common resources in these fields and through what means. Thirdly, consideration is given to the extent to which the rights and obligations of these bodies vary between Member States, either in terms of a state’s overall membership of an organisation or in the variation of obligations between members of an organisation. Second, the case of the EMU is analysed under an historical perspective, looking at the developments of this policy area alongside differentiation patterns from The Bretton Woods System to nowadays.

The Irish border proved one of the most difficult issues in the negotiations on the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union. A persistent point of contention since the partition of Ireland a hundred years ago, it had been put into abeyance by a combination of the historic Common Travel Area, the peace settlement in Northern Ireland and the EU Single Market, which had allowed the disappearance of physical structures. The final agreement leaves important areas of ambiguity but does represent a breach in the UK’s vision of Brexit and a single settlement for the whole of the United Kingdom. It represents the first time that the EU has permitted partial integration in the EU for a region of a non-Member State but the circumstances are such that it does not provide a precedent. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

The mounting phenomenon of differentiated integration in the EU has hitherto been studied mainly with regard to its drivers and legal configuration. Taking the existence of differentiated integration as a given, a conceptual framework is developed for analysing its governance in practice and the conditions under which this is effective and legitimate. Referring to examples from monetary integration and Justice and Home Affairs, the framework emphasises the interplay between the legal and organisational dimensions of differentiated integration, between commitment to common policies and opportunities for participation in their development and implementation. This includes measures for assessing and conditions for explaining the effectiveness and legitimacy of differentiated integration.

The Brexit deal, as represented by the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is the start of a new relationship between the UK and the EU. As the economic and political consequences of Brexit play out, there will be pressure to change the TCA, either in a “softer” or “harder” direction in one particular issue area or another. To try to find out where the EU-UK relationship might be heading in the medium-term we conducted a conjoint survey experiment with a random sample of British voters, where we asked them to choose between different hypothetical “package deals”. This forced respondents to have to make trade-offs across key issues. When faced with such choices, British citizens overall prefer a “softer” form of Brexit to the TCA: where the UK applies EU regulatory standards in return for greater access to the EU’s single market. However, a majority of Leave voters prefer a much “harder” trade-off: of full regulatory sovereignty but continued restrictions on UK exports. We also found that Scottish citizens prefer a closer relationship with the EU across a range of issues than do English citizens. Reconciling these differences will continue to be a challenge for British politicians and policy-makers. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

How does the public form preferences about differentiated integration (DI)? The literature on mass-elite linkages offers two perspectives: top-down, political elites cue the public, or bottom-up, political elites react to public preferences. This paper develops expectations based on both perspectives, and presents novel empirical data on citizens, political parties, and governments to test them. We distinguish preferences over differentiated policy integration, like “Opt-Outs”, from preferences over polity differentiation, such as “Two-Speed Europe”. Although our evidence is observational and therefore cannot establish causal relationships between elites and the mass public, our results are most compatible with the notion of a top-down linkage. This is because DI preferences are generally of low salience, and first revealed at the European level in the context of negotiations. Subsequently, this revelation of DI preferences shapes domestic discussions about DI, especially at the level of political parties. Yet, this mostly pertains to situations when governments do not yet have clear DI preferences of their own, meaning government preferences are not yet formed and revealed in the context of the supranational negotiations. Overall, this study suggests that mass-elite linkage in the preference formation on DI might be more tenuous than either the top-down or bottom-up perspective might assume. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

The objective of this paper is to present how the roles attributed to the institution of the EU Council Rotating Presidency changed after the reform of the Lisbon Treaty. It argues that the legal modifications introduced by the treaty brought about some further going changes of the roles performed by the EU member state presiding the EU Council. The analysis goes beyond simple reading the Reform Treaty and focuses on the perceptions and expectations towards the Rotating Presidency (as understood by the logic of appropriateness). The change of perceptions regarding the roles of the Rotating Presidency is seen in relation to the level of the council system and its field of competence. As a result this study delivers a map of roles (expected behavior in a given institutional setting) according to their salience, as well as the level and the competence area of the Council. The explanatory variables employed go also along the lines: old / new and big / small member states, which makes it possible to identify the relatively important differences in the roles prescribed for the new and small as well as the old and big member states chairing the EU Council. The study is based on the analysis of the perceptions and expectations towards the Presidency gathered from experts (dealing with the presidency on practical or more theoretical grounds) in the form of questionnaires and, complementary, semi-structured interviews

In recent years, leading political actors and institutions have suggested further differentiation as a plausible scenario for the EU’s future, in fields such as economic governance, social Europe, migration, tax harmonisation, and defence. One central question is to what extent such scenarios require revision of the current EU Treaties and which ones can, on the contrary, be implemented under the current Treaty text. As the chances for Treaty revision are very remote, the latter option is the more promising. Under the current rules, the various forms of differentiated integration offer different costs and benefits due, in part, to the legal conditions and constraints applying to them. For example, enhanced cooperation (wherein a group of member states can ‘use’ the EU institutions) does not allow for self-selection of participating countries and can only be undertaken for specific projects and as a ‘last resort’. By contrast, separate agreements concluded under international law between ‘willing and able’ member states do allow for self-selection of the participants, but are less effective tools as they cannot use the legal instruments of EU law. This paper presents and weighs the advantages and costs of each of the forms of differentiated integration, in relation to the various policy areas in which they might be experimented in the coming years. It does so from a legal perspective. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.

This report shows that despite the full harmonisation approach promoted by the European Commission and adopted by the EU legislature in the case of the Consumer Rights Directive, the member states still have some opportunities to adjust European norms to the national reality. Nevertheless, our sample of four EU countries – Czechia, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands – documents that the member states do not use the space for discretion offered by the Directive’s substantive provisions to a great extent. Our analysis shows that the four member states tried to preserve their existing consumer protection regimes to the greatest possible extent. They used discretion in such a way that enabled retaining existing domestic laws and practices. In contrast to largely harmonized substantive CRD norms, the enforcement rests largely in member states powers. The means of putting the consumer contract law into practice shows some overlaps, but their use varies largely. The member states differ, importantly, in the overall emphasis on private or public enforcement. More specific differences include lists of remedies, persons who can bring the complaints, bodies dealing with the complaints or in the range and severity of penalties. The availability of class actions and ADR, but especially their use, differs wildly. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.