Abstract

European Law and Domestic Party Politics: Why Germany was Among the last EU Member States to Implement the Racial Equality Directive

Germany was one of the last EU member states to implement the Racial Equality Directive. The European Court of Justice even convicted Germany of failing to comply with the directive on time. Why did the left-wing German government, which had given its consent to the directive in the Council of Ministers, have so much trouble transposing this directive into law? And why was it not until a grand coalition came to power that the reform process could finally be completed? This article shows that political conflicts between the ruling parties, the opposition and economic interests repeatedly brought the process of incorporating the directive into German law to a halt. These conflicts, however, did not centre on the reforms required by the directive. Instead, the main bone of contention was the Red-Green government's plans to „gold plate", or go extensively beyond, the standards required by the EU. This pattern of politicised conflicts over implementation matches the findings of an earlier research project that identified three clusters of countries within the fifteen „old" EU member states, each with its own particular logic of implementing EU directives, and subsumed Germany under the „world of domestic politics".