Dolce far niente? Non-compliance and blame avoidance in the EU
Dolce far niente? Non-compliance and blame avoidance in the EU (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1909938) was written by Lisa Kriegmair, Berthold Rittberger, Bernhard Zangl, and Tim Heinkelmann-Wild in 2021. It was published in West European Politics (vol. 45, no. 5).
National governments sometimes threaten non-compliance with binding EU legislation. If followed through on, this prompts enforcement from the Commission. An example is the coordinated response of the Visegrád states to the EU refugee relocation scheme. This was censured by the ECJ.
One hypothesis states that this behavior is explained by local unpopularity of the legislation. National politicians claim credit for obstructionism ("signal responsiveness to their domestic constituents"), and avoid blame when the legislation is implemented anyway.
Another hypothesis states that this behavior is short-sighted and will backfire; constituents on balance support EU sovereignty and dislike national obstructionism.
The authors study public opinion before and after Conte’s threat to disregard the 2018 EU budget directives. The EU set budget deficit targets at 0.8% of GDP. On September 27th, 2018, Conte instead announced a 2019 budget targeting a deficit of 2.4%. On November 21st the Commission reacted by opening an Excessive Deficit Procedure against Italy. On December 12th, the government conceded to a compromise target of 2.04%.
The authors analyzed the language in newspaper articles across these phases of the conflict.
- Two newspapers with largest circulation:
Corriere della Sera is considered centrist
la Repubblica is center-leftist
- Dataset covers June 1st, 2018 (beginning of the Conte government) to May 25th, 2019 (EU elections).
They find that the evidence only supports the blame attraction hypothesis, i.e. threats of non-compliance backfired.
Reading Notes
I find it difficult to accept that newspaper articles published by a small set of established and entrenched publishers are representative of public opinion. Nonetheless this article documents a counter-example to the prevailing assumption that the design of the EU facilitates blame avoidance.