Member States’ Compliance with European Environmental Directives between Environmental Activism and Institutional Misfits

The compliance of Member States with European Directives is a delicate issue, especially when related to environmental policies. This is indeed the sector with the highest number of infringement cases. A central feature of the causes of non-compliance lies in the misfit that might arise between national policies, national administrative regulatory styles and structures and requirements encompassed in European Union policies, more specifically in directives. While changing the core of national traditions might be influenced by individual Member States’ willingness to do so, the presence of environmental awareness and activeness might foster this evolution towards a more efficient compliance. The objective of this case study is to investigate the interaction between national environmental NGOs’ activeness, national administrative structures, and the compliance of Member States. We therefore analysed the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany. Findings underlined the claim that this is one of the least respected directives in the arena of environmental internal market ones, meaning that its implementation process has been marked by numerous cases of non-compliance. The main argument resulting from this research is that the level of compliance is more dependent on national administrative structures and on national authorities’ willingness to reach changes rather than on the mere activeness of environmental NGOs. Indeed, cases in which NGOs actively intervened to foster compliance were those in which Member States already failed to meet requirements. Therefore, compliant behaviour of Member States might not be directly fostered ex-ante by environmental NGOs yet re-established ex-post by those once defection has already occurred. In addition, national environmental NGOs’ work heavily depends on national authorities’ willingness to make changes in their administrative structures and policies.