Surf, Sea, Sand…and Sewage: Implementing European Bathing Water Policy in the United Kingdom and France

Scholarly study of the European Community (EC) has concentrated on the macrolevel process of regional integration to the neglect of its ‘internal’ policy processes. A newly emerging literature on EC public policy is beginning to address this imbalance, but it is largely focused on the development of policy outputs culminating in the adoption of policies by the Council of Ministers, rather than the long-term outcomes of policy at the national and subnational levels. This paper develops a multitheoretical framework and applies it to a case study of the implementation of the Directive on bathing water in the United Kingdom and France to reveal the sort of intriguing questions and puzzles which emerge in the ‘postdecisional’ phase of the EC policy process. The study draws comparisons between implementation in the two countries, showing that policy ‘making’ and retuning continued long after the formal point of adoption. As in national systems, policy implementation and the interpretation and evaluation of policy outcomes in the EC are just as much part of the political process as agenda setting and policy framing.