Costs of Implementing EU Law for German Federal and State Governments

The transposition of EU law into the domestic legal order can place a considerable burden on the budgets of the German federal and state governments. To identify such financial implications, the public expenditures on EU legal acts estimated in draft laws are statistically evaluated over a period of 30 years. The results show that the number of implementing laws generating costs for public resources has increased significantly since 1990. In addition, the amount of money that has to be spent on transposing and adopting EU laws has recently increased sharply. Both developments make it more difficult to exercise parliamentary budget rights, because delegates cannot effectively control these “EU incidental costs“.