Pincers and Prestige: Explaining the Implementation of EU Gender Equality Legislation

This paper answers the question, under which conditions compliance with a supranational agreement can be obtained in cases in which a member state is unwilling to comply. It shows that the willingness to implement depends on the economic and ideological costs of policy change and on the amount of pressure exercised by societal actors. An unwilling state decides to comply when its prestige is at risk and it is ‘squeezed between pincers’, put under pressure by supranational and domestic actors simultaneously. An analysis of the implementation of EU gender equality policies in France, Germany, and the Netherlands between 1958 and 2000, shows that, depending on their identity, member states valued their prestige and were sensitive to pressure by the European Commission and the European Court. However, when their concern about prestige was not matched by domestic pressure, implementation remained predominantly rhetorical. Therefore, the Commission and the Court actively support political and judicial actors at the transnational and domestic level in order to make the ‘pincers’ work and obtain implementation in spite of high costs.