Compliance of member states with European environmental law

Europeanisation has become a popular research topic as well as the Europeanisation research on Environmental law, recognisable by the incremental number of papers and books published on this issue. This study focuses on the environmental policy field and considers whether policy similarity among member states is associated with compliance with EU environmental law. More specific it analyses whether the level of similarity in the member states´ domestic environmental policies influences the compliance of the member states with EU environmental law. This analysis includes the most promising theories in regard to Europeanisation, EU compliance and EU convergence literature. It combines the policy similarity analysis with the non-compliance factors and the uploading-downloading and leader-laggard assumptions. In addition, this study examines a case study in two member states. The analysed cases are Germany and the United Kingdom, which were selected according to the most different case selection method. In the case study analysis the domestic environmental policies in 2010, are compared and the results of the policy similarity analysis will be set in relation to the performance of the cases in regard to their compliance with European environmental law. Thereby it also investigates the factors that are associated with noncompliance of the member states with EU environmental policies.