Dorte SINDBJERG Martinsen

University of Copenhagen · Department of Political Science

European Union (EU) governance faces a fundamental implementation and enforcement dilemma. On the one hand, calls for effective EU policies are manifold and have increased over time. On the other hand, the competence to implement and directly enforce EU policies remains with the member states. To overcome this dilemma, an emerging institutional arc...

The COVID-19 pandemic that hit Europe in early 2020 radically reshaped the political agenda at all levels of Europe's multi-level system within a matter of weeks. It continued to overshadow all other public concerns throughout 2021. The single most important development that distinguished the second year of the pandemic from the first was that, fro...

The COVID-19 pandemic that hit Europe in early 2020 radically reshaped the political agenda at all levels of Europe's multi-level system within a matter of weeks. It continued to overshadow all other public concerns throughout 2021. The single most important development that distinguished the second year of the pandemic from the first was that, fro...

European administrative networks (EANs) are groups of national administrative organizations which are established to improve national-level implementation of European Union (EU) law. This paper addresses a key question concerning these networks: what drives interactions within them? To this end, the paper adds a dynamic political perspective to ins...

During the COVID‐19 crisis, European Union (EU) health policy has become high politics. Key parts of EU health cooperation have, however, long developed more discretely in European administrative networks (EANs) and become core building blocks in the institutional architecture of an EU health policy. In these networks, health experts interact regul...

Publication in peer-reviewed journals is of major importance to careers in academia. It has become clear that a considerable gender gap exists in political science journal publishing and a debate on how to confront this gap has got under way. This article examines the gender distribution in publishing (1978–2021), submissions and reviewing (2015 to...

Jens Blom-Hansen, Jørgen Grønnegård Christensen, Caroline Howard Grøn, Michael Hansen Jensen og Peter Bjerre Mortensen (2021), Det nationale råderum ved gennemførelse af EU-regler, København: DJØF-forlag.

This article introduces a special issue of West European Politics on the COVID-19 crisis. It first sets out the dual challenge to democratic principles and democratic performance that the COVID-19 pandemic has posed to European liberal democracies. Three bodies of scholarship are especially relevant in framing this dual democratic challenge: those...

This article introduces a special issue of West European Politics on the COVID-19 crisis. It first sets out the dual challenge to democratic principles and democratic performance that the COVID-19 pandemic has posed to European liberal democracies. Three bodies of scholarship are especially relevant in framing this dual democratic challenge: those...

The integration and policymaking of the European Union (EU) are claimed to challenge Nordic cooperation as a separate ‘common order.’ Increasing interdependencies in the EU have forced all EU member states to collaborate and share sovereignty in an increasing number of policy areas. This article studies the coexistence of Nordic cooperation and Eur...

The European Union (EU) increasingly resorts to new forms of governance to establish unified health and welfare policies without member states having to transfer their sovereignty to a supranational level. European Administrative Networks are important instruments in the toolbox of new forms of governance, dealing with rulemaking, rule monitoring,...

The Danish welfare state is together with its Nordic counterparts often presented as distinct. The model has traditionally been characterised as universalist, de-commodified, residence-based, non-contributory and relatively generous. Although social protection in Denmark is still primarily tax-financed and several benefits remain universal, the Dan...

Despite increasing interdependencies, national decision-makers have been reluctant to delegate healthcare competences to the supranational level in the European Union (EU). To overcome this impasse, EU institutions and member states have agreed on middle ground compromises by means of experimentalist governance. In this paper, we examine a tool of...

Migration is often perceived as a challenge to the welfare state. To manage this challenge, advanced welfare states have established transgovernmental networks. This article examines how domestic factors condition the interaction of representatives of advanced welfare states when they cooperate on transnational welfare governance. Based on new surv...

This contribution analyses if and under what conditions bottom-up pressures constrain the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Neofunctionalists famously explained the power of the Court by its use of ‘law as a mask and shield’. Due to its technical nature, the Court is able to mask the political substance of ‘integration through law’ and...

Free movement and equal treatment of European Union (EU) citizens are among the core principles of European integration. If any further proof was needed, the Brexit referendum and its aftermath have demonstrated how politically salient these principles can become. However, despite their central role in European integration, little is known about th...

The constitutionalisation of the European Union has since the early 1990s become a truism in European studies. This article revisits the constitutionalisation theory drawing on the insights from emerging historical research and new strands of political science research. We find that the conventional constitutional narrative is less convincing when...

Maurizio Ferrera’s essay on how to take EU citizenship forward is an inspiring and welcome contribution to a heated, politicised debate. In my contribution I focus on the tension between the ‘small constituency of mobile citizens’ and those who stay. As researcher we need to engage in fact-finding missions. And there is empirical evidence that mobi...

The European Union’s (EU) fundamental principles of free movement of persons and non-discrimination have long challenged the traditional closure of the welfare state. Whereas the relationship between the EU and the welfare state appeared largely reconciled before the grand enlargement of 2004, economic downturn and politicisation question the nexus...

Translating complex, politicised and ambiguous European legislation and case law into practice is the difficult everyday condition for street-level bureaucrats in European Member States. Yet their crucial role remains remarkably understudied in EU compliance literature. This paper argues that street-level bureaucrats at local implementing levels in...

Recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) marks a striking shift towards a more restrictive interpretation of EU citizens’ rights. The Court's turnaround is not only highly relevant for practical debates about ‘Social Europe’ or ‘welfare migration’, but also enlightening from a more general, theoretical viewpoint. Several recent s...

A ‘dually open’ free movement system has evolved in the European Union (EU), granting EU citizens the right to free movement within the Union as well as cross-border welfare rights. Some scholarly literature and public debates have characterised the system as corrosive to the nationally organised welfare state, which will become a ‘magnet’ for the...

For decades, the European legislators and the Court of Justice have extended the rights to free movement and cross-border welfare in the European Union (EU). Strong assumptions on the impact of these rules have been made. It has been held by some that they will lead to welfare migration and thus to be a fundamental challenge to the welfare state. H...

Recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) marks a striking shift towards a more restrictive interpretation of EU citizens’ rights. The Court’s turnaround is not only highly relevant for practical debates about ‘Social Europe’ or ‘welfare migration’, but also enlightening from a more general, theoretical viewpoint. Several recent s...

For decades, the European legislators and the Court of Justice have extended the rights to free movement and cross-border welfare in the European Union (EU). Strong assumptions on the impact of these rules have been posed, by some held to lead to welfare migration and thus to be a fundamental challenge to the welfare state. However, studies of how...

Today, many people agree that the EU lacks solidarity and needs a social dimension. This debate is not new, but until now the notion of a 'social Europe' remained vague and elusive. To make progress, we need a coherent conception of the reasons behind, and the agenda for, not a 'social Europe', but a new idea: a European Social Union. We must motiv...

The European Union’s rules on free movement of people and the right to cross-border welfare are increasingly contested and have evoked one of the most salient debates in EU politics. The assumption that EU immigrants pose a net ‘welfare burden’ on the host member state has sounded loud and wide in recent years. This calls for an empirical test. In...

This paper examines the impact of judicialisation on the right to cross-border healthcare in Denmark and Spain, i.e., the national impact of legal integration as spurred by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). We expect the national impact of judicialisation to be conditioned by the ex-post judicial, administrative and political respo...

Healthcare has only slowly appeared on the European Union’s (EU) policy agenda. EU involvement in policies concerning the organization, financing and the provision of diagnosis, care and cures to ill people developed along three fragmented tracks: (a) EU public health policies concerning the well-being of all people; (b) the application of the free...

European administrative networks (EANs) are a key building block of the European Administrative Space (EAS). Crucially, they are to fill the gap between the EU's policy ambitions and its limited administrative capacities. Whereas ample research has been done on policy preparation networks, the role of implementing EANs has received less attention i...

European administrative networks (EANs) are a key building block of the European Administrative Space (EAS). Crucially, they are to fill the gap between the EU’s policy ambitions and its limited administrative capacities. Whereas ample research has been done on policy preparation networks, the role of implementing EANs has received less attention i...

The practical realization of European Union (EU) rights and obligations depends to a considerable extent on how national public authorities apply EU legislation in their daily work. A growing number of EU compliance studies have probed the transposition of EU law and discussed the importance and shortcomings of the European Commission, the Court of...

Scholars generally agree that courts are powerful authorities in settling disputes between parties, but the broader and political impact of such resolution is disputed. Are courts powerful generators of political change? This book examines the ability of the Court of Justice of the European Union to foster political change for an European Union (EU...

The ability of courts to generate political change has long been debated in national, comparative and international politics. In the examination of the interaction between judicial and legislative politics, scholars have disagreed on the degree of judicial power and the ability of politics to override unwanted jurisprudence. In this debate, the Cou...

This article examines the institutional output and preliminary outcome of the EU Patients' Rights Directive in two health care models: the Beveridge and Bismarck models in Denmark and Bulgaria, respectively. The study applies a most dissimilar system design to explain a similar transposition output through three explanatory variables, namely, insti...

European Union (EU) involvement in healthcare policies is growing, despite the fact that national governments prefer to keep an almost exclusive say in these policies. This article explains how this shift of authority could happen and explores whether it will lead to a European healthcare union. It argues that federalism offers the most fruitful wa...

This paper examines the institutional output and preliminary outcome of the European Union (EU) Patients' Rights Directive in two healthcare models: the Beveridge and Bismarcian models in Denmark and Bulgaria, respectively. The study applies a most dissimilar system design to explain a similar transposition output through three explanatory variable...

Studies of the upward transfer of power to European Union (EU) institutions have long focused on how integration is progressed. However, the burgeoning literature on differentiation has brought flexibility and variation into the picture. This contribution aims to add to this strand of literature by examining the ‘path to differentiation’ within EU...

Co-decisions between the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament are increasingly adopted as early agreements. Recent EU studies have pinpointed how this informal turn in EU governance has altered the existing balance of power between EU actors and within EU institutions. However, the implications of accelerated EU decision-making are expe...

This volume examines the state of social Europe when European Union principles and policies have to be implemented in the member states while the EU legitimacy crisis and the Great Recession prevail. The volume explores diverse processes, stages and subjects of implementation in a variety of social policies to identify different institutional dynam...

Studies explaining the timeliness and correctness of the transposition of EU directives into national legislation have provided rather inconclusive findings. They do not offer a clear-cut prediction concerning the transposition of the patients’ rights directive, which is one of the first that concerns the organisation and financing of national heal...

Synopsis This contribution examines the increased European Union (EU) regulation within the healthcare sector, exemplified by the regulation of patient rights in cross border healthcare. This provides an example of the various complexities arising from the operationalization of a European Union policy within nation states' health systems. The contr...

The application of European Union (EU) rules is, in general, the responsibility of national executives. This key intergovernmental aspect of the EU's administrative order makes compliance with supranational law vulnerable to distortion. However, the European executive has added important fire-alarm oversight mechanisms by means of transgovernmental...

The chapter examines the tensions between welfare states on the one hand and social Europe on the other and colliding principles in their historical setting. In particular, the chapter focuses on Social Services of General Interest (SSGI) as core institutions of the welfare state and the political response to the European impact on these public ser...

This chapter examines how the Danish public administration responds to the European Union (EU). First, it does so first on a more general account in the EU policy cycle, but narrows the focus down to concern the role played when EU policies are implemented. Secondly it examines implementation of EU obligations within two policy areas; healthcare an...

In various aspects health care constitutes a less likely or critical case of both European integration and Europeanization (Eckstein 1975). As set out explicitly in the Treaty, the organization of health care is the responsibility of the Member States (art. 168 (7) of the Lisbon Treaty, previously art. 152 (5)). As other social policy areas, nation...

Judicial policy-making is having an increasing impact on political domains traditionally guarded by national sovereignty. This paper examines how the European judiciary has expanded Community competences into the policy domains of welfare and immigration, followed by subsequent Europeanization, against the preferences of the member governments. It...

Notwithstanding some persisting, and probably irresolvable, problem solving gaps, Social Europe escaped the joint-decision trap quite regularly. Treaty-base games and arena shifting, most importantly, helped to bring about more secondary law and more ECJ driven political decisions than might have been expected from looking at the decision rules. Fu...

Accountability differs in its meaning, scope, and impact. Consequently, its expression as a value and an instrument of “good governance” differs across time within and between organizations. Through the prism of theories on public values, this article examines accountability as a value in the administration of the European Union, that is, the Europ...

Welfare regulation in the European Union continues to crawl forward despite salient conflicts of interests. This article addresses the fundamental puzzle of how regulatory competences may expand into the core of the welfare state and how conflicts are, eventually, managed in such processes. It analyses the EU cross-border provision of healthcare se...

National courts have been key players in the legal push for Europe, though notably to varying degrees. This paper examines the persisting variations in the referral rates of national courts and the underlying causal factors, aiming to better understand why some member states' courts have been more reluctant to join in the legal push for Europe. By...

Welfare regulation in the European Union (EU) continues to crawl forward despite salient conflicts of interests. This paper addresses the fundamental puzzle of how regulatory competences may expand into the core of the welfare state and how conflicts are, eventually, managed in such processes. It analyses the EU cross-border provision of healthcare...

The paper examines the Europeanization process and the impact of the European Union (EU) on national healthcare policies, using the example of Denmark. The analysis reveals that although health policy formally falls within the competence of member states, the impact of the EU is becoming increasingly conspicuous and has contributed to a gradual res...

The paper examines the extent to which member states control the impact of European Union (EU) policies. It does so through an historical study of what is considered to be the 'least likely case' - the Europeanization of Danish gender equality. The analytical findings identify various and diverse effects of European integration over time on nationa...

LAW, LEGITIMACY, AND EUROPEAN GOVERNANCE. FUNCTIONAL PARTICIPATION IN SOCIAL REGULATION Stijn Smismans Oxford University Press, 2004, 519 pp., £60 (hb) ISBN: 0199270309

Studies of Europeanization have demonstrated that the impact of European integration differs between Member States and across policies. Although Europeanization research has been expanded and clarified in recent years, we still know relatively little about the factors mediating the national processes of change that thus condition impact. This artic...

This article examines the process through which a European healthcare dimension has been established and which has gradually extended the rights of European patients to cross-border healthcare. The integrative course has been charted by the legal activism of the European Court of Justice, whereas political voice has largely been absent. Judicial ac...

Although the European Union (EU) has not formally been assigned welfare policy competence, it has for decades regulated social benefits between the Member States. The social rights and obligations of the European migrant have for long been safeguarded by the EU, and the mutual responsibility for welfare undertaken by the Member States of the Union...

Within the study of European integration, the questions of the existence of ‘social Europe’ and the possible impact of European integration on national welfare policies continue to be most disputed. The present study aims to contribute to this scholarly discussion, questioning to what extent the European Union has institutionalised social security...

This paper considers adaptive pressures and domestic impacts on national welfare states exerted by the institutionalisation of intra-European social security rights. The paper discusses the hypothesis of 'welfare tourism' and whether intra-European social security foremost exerts adaptive pressure on the residence-based welfare state such as is oft...

This paper considers the adaptive pressure and domestic ,impact on Danish and German ,welfare policies exerted by the institutionalisation of intra-European social security rights. The paper thus addresses the effects of a specific part of social Europe, which has been incrementally enhanced through,political and ,judicial decision-making. It has b...

Contemporary social Europe operates within a political deficit. The political deficit is a consequence of an increasing set of veto actors, their split preferences and inbuilt joint decision traps. At the same time, however, contemporary social Europe moves forward at considerable speed. During the last decade, the European Court of Justice has adv...

Think Tank Report 2008, tress Training and Reporting on European Social Security, Ghent University 2008. www.tress-network.org.

[From the introduction]. Although the European Union has not formally been assigned welfare policy competence, it has for decades regulated social benefits between the member states. The social rights and obligations of the European migrant have for long been safeguarded by the EU, and the mutual welfare responsibility undertaken by the member stat...