Routledge Compliance in the Enlarged European Union: Living Rights or Dead Letters?

This book offers a rigorous empirical and theoretical analysis of an important dimension of European integration - the implementation of EU legislation and its effect in the wake of the accession of ten new member states to the EU in 2004. The authors concentrate on the key field of social policy, which is of vital interest for the viability of the welfare state and the future of labour law standards in Europe. Following on from a previous prize-winning study, Complying with Europe: EU Harmonization and Soft Law in the Member States, this new volume looks at how EU social legislation works in practice, particularly in Central and Eastern European countries. The authors offer in-depth empirical case studies of three of the most significant pieces of EU social legislation: the Working Time Directive, the Equal Treatment Directive and the Employment Equality Directive. Their analysis makes it possible for the authors to make useful generalizations for the policy field as a whole. Review 'This rich and fine-grained study offers valuable insights into how European Union social legislation is operating in practice in several of the member states from central Europe. The authors draw out thoughtful recommendations on ways of promoting more systematic compliance in the future.' Helen Wallace, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK About the Author Professor Gerda Falkner is Director of the Institute for European Integration Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria; and Associate Professor, Institute of Government, University of Vienna, Austria. She was earlier senior researcher and research group director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. She is the author of EU Social Policy in the 1990s: Towards a Corporatist Policy Community (Routledge 1998) and (with Oliver Treib, Miriam Hartlapp and Simone Leiber) Complying with Europe: EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States (CUP 2005), which won the European Union Studies Association's Best Book Prize in 2006. Dr Elisabeth Holzleithner is Assistant Professor in the Department of Legal Philosophy, University of Vienna. She has published widely on issues of gender equality and (non-) discrimination from a legal perspective. Dr Oliver Treib is Head of the Department of Political Science at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna. Previously at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, he is the co-author (with Gerda Falkner, Miriam Hartlapp and Simone Leiber) of Complying with Europe: EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States (1995) and the author of a German language monograph on the role of domestic politics in the implementation of EU Directives, as well as a number of articles and chapters on related subjects.