National Adaptation to European Integration: The Importance of Institutional Veto Points

The repercussions of European integration on national policymaking have increasingly drawn scholarly attention, yet, the determinants of national adaptation to the European Union are still poorly understood. This article takes issue with evolving arguments which grant crucial importance to the “goodness of fit” between European provisions and national rules and practices for explaining the degree of national adjustment to European requirements. In the case of the implementation of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the country with the greatest misfit, the United Kingdom, adapted more successfully than the country which only needed incremental adjustments, Germany. The German record was also worse than the Dutch, despite the higher adaptation pressure of the latter. The case study suggests that the number of institutional veto points that central governments has to face when imposing European provisions on their constituencies, ultimately tend to shape the pace and quality of implementation, regardless of differential degrees in the goodness of fit.