When ‘Must’ Means ‘Maybe’:Varieties of Risk Regulation and the Problem of Trade-offs in Europe. HowSAFE Working Paper, No. 1

This paper explains how the inevitable trade-offs between risk and cost in occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation are managed across EU member states. While trade-offs are explicitlysanctioned in UK law, many continental countries mandate ambitious goals of safety. This contrast in statutory goals appears to reflect cleavages identified in the risk regulation literature between European precaution and Anglo-Saxon neoliberal risk-taking, as well as in the Varieties of literature which suggests workers are better protected in co-ordinated than in liberal market economies. However, we challenge those claims through adetailed analysis of OHS regimes in the UK, Netherlands, Germany and France, which shows that a narrow focus on headline regulatory goals misses how each country makes cost-benefit trade-offs on safety. In particular, we show how the nature and outcome of those trade-offs substantially vary according to the degree of coupling between regulation and welfare regimes, and to national traditions of common and civil law. As such, we offer a novel explanation for risk regulation and governance variety that emphasises deep institutional differences among welfare states in the organization of the political economy and their philosophies of regulation

La politique de voisinage face au délicat dilemme de la mobilité. = The European Neighborhood Policy facing the difficult dilemma of mobility

No abstract

Secrecy and security in transatlantic terrorism finance tracking

Access to and diffusion of information relating to the Terrorism Finance Tracking Programme (TFTP) has become a focal point for discussions about secrecy and democracy in the European Union. This paper analyses the dynamics of secrecy and publicity in the context of post-9/11 security programmes, in particular, the TFTP. Far from a binary between secrecy and transparency, the TFTP involves complex dynamics of knowledge, and strictly regulated information distribution. The purpose of the article is threefold. First, we contribute to debates on EU secrecy and democratic oversight, by advancing an understanding of secrecy as practice. Second, we document and discuss the longer trajectory of the contested secrecy and publicity of the TFTP, through examining three ‘secrecy controversies’. Third, we ask whether the logics of secrecy in the EU are being revised and challenged in the context of transatlantic security cooperation. The rationales of secrecy deployed in security practice hinge on particular notions of potential future harm that, we argue, are shifting in the face of current understandings of the terrorist threat

Les risques de l'inspection: Les stratégies de défense des inspecteurs face aux changements du droit

Since the early 2000s, French state inspectors have been subjected to impor- tant reforms and an increased proceduralization of their activity, within the wider shift towards management-based regulation on matters related to safety. This article compares how Labor Inspectors, Food Safety Inspectors, and Industrial Facility Inspectors reacted to these transformations. It shows how new policies involving the formalization of procedures and the prioriti- zation of risks were embraced or resisted by inspectors to manage their institutional risk.Depuis les années 2000, trois corps d’inspection – les inspecteurs du travail, des installations classées pour la protection de l’environnement et de la sécurité sanitaire des aliments – ont connu des réformes importantes et une procéduralisation accrue de leur activité, dans le contexte d’un transfert vers les opérateurs économiques d’une obligation de sécurité qu’il leur appartient de traduire en mesures de sécurité. Nous discutons comment les instruments de formalisation et de priorisation des risques sont utilisés par les inspecteurs pour porter un jugement sur les établissements qui préserve leur réputation

Risk-based governance against national obstacles? Comparative dynamics of Europeanization in Dutch, French, and German flooding policies

Paul R, Bouder F, Wesseling M. Risk-based governance against national obstacles? Comparative dynamics of Europeanization in Dutch, French, and German flooding policies. JOURNAL OF RISK RESEARCH. 2016;19(8: SI):1043-1062.Comparative studies have recently highlighted obstacles related to continental European countries' proclivity for adopting risk-based governance. However, so far, the interface between risk-based policy-making in the EU and potential policy change in reluctant member states has been underexplored. We compare flooding policies in the Netherlands with those in France and Germany to establish the extent to and conditions under which EU-level risk-based policies can transform national governance approaches. Drawing on the concept of Europeanization, we compare national adaptation pressures stemming from the EU floods directive, investigate adaptation dynamics, and account for transformations towards risk-based thinking. We find that Europeanization enabled a mainstreaming of risk-based flooding policies in France and Germany, as national actors used the EU as a venue to entice a desired policy rationalization and centralization. By contrast, and somewhat unexpectedly, the Netherlands partially retrenched from EU procedures because the directive's reporting mechanisms were considered to breach The Hague's aspirational policy approach. Overall, the paper identifies a strong potential for even soft' EU policies to ease national reluctance to risk-based governance approaches, but it also indicates limits where member states use risk-based techniques within an aspirational protection framework

Les risques de l'inspection:Les stratégies de défense des inspecteurs face aux changements du droit

Depuis les années 2000, trois corps d’inspection – les inspecteurs du travail, des installations classées pour la protection de l’environnement et de la sécurité sanitaire des aliments – ont connu des réformes importantes et une procéduralisation accrue de leur activité, dans le contexte d’un transfert vers les opérateurs économiques d’une obligation de sécurité qu’il leur appartient de traduire en mesures de sécurité. Nous discutons comment les instruments de formalisation et de priorisation des risques sont utilisés par les inspecteurs pour porter un jugement sur les établissements qui préserve leur réputation.Since the early 2000s, French state inspectors have been subjected to impor- tant reforms and an increased proceduralization of their activity, within the wider shift towards management-based regulation on matters related to safety. This article compares how Labor Inspectors, Food Safety Inspectors, and Industrial Facility Inspectors reacted to these transformations. It shows how new policies involving the formalization of procedures and the prioriti- zation of risks were embraced or resisted by inspectors to manage their institutional risk

Why regulators assess risk differently: Regulatory style, business organization, and the varied practice of risk-based food safety inspections across the EU

Borraz O, Beaussier A-L, Wesseling M, et al. Why regulators assess risk differently: Regulatory style, business organization, and the varied practice of risk-based food safety inspections across the EU. REGULATION & GOVERNANCE. 2020.This article advances scholarship on comparative regulation by moving beyond the conventional focus on formal law and EU comitology to assess the extent of 'practice convergence' in the implementation of EU regulation. Drawing on 50 key informant interviews, a survey, and policy document analysis, we compare how regulators in England, Germany, France and the Netherlands have implemented EU requirements that food safety inspections be 'risk-based'. Focusing on a clear dependent variable - risk-scoring methods - we find important differences in the conception and targeting of risk-based inspections; with starkly different implications for what kind of food businesses they need to target to ensure safety within an ostensibly harmonized single market. We attribute variation in the implementation of risk-based inspection to the ways that EU requirements were filtered through long-entrenched regulatory styles and modes of food business organization in each country, reinforcing preexisting inspection practices in the design of new risk-based tools