Coping with Europe: the impact of British and German administrations on the implementation of EU environmental policy

A central problem for improving the implementation effectiveness of European legislation lies in the impact of national administrative traditions. The dependence on national administrations for implementing European policies implies that the formal transposition and practical application of supranational policies are crucially influenced by administrative traditions prevalent in a certain policy field, which may differ substantially from country to country. Focusing on the implementation of EU environmental policy in Britain and Germany, it is the objective of this article to investigate the interplay of national administrative traditions and European policy implementation in closer detail. The main argument is that the extent to which administrative traditions affect implementation effectiveness is less dependent on the 'real' costs of adaptation than on the level of embeddedness of existing structures.