Abstract
AbstractThis 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.
Highlights
Without many of the conventional tools of state for forging an imagined national community, like an army or lingua franca, the European Union has put considerable effort into creating a single market through the adoption of common regulatory frameworks and technical standards
Food safety is a responsibility of the Länder in Germany, but in this case we focus on the whole country rather than a specific Land, given the joint efforts of local and central authorities in harmonising food safety inspections across the country
In the more pluralist context of France and England, the state continues to play a more important role given the fragmented organisation of the food industry, which has been unable to develop best practice standards, codes of practice or private assurance schemes that sufficiently align with regulatory demands or command the trust of regulators. These two factors lead to significant differences in the definition of risk and, by extension, the kinds of food business operators (FBOs) most frequently targeted for inspections (Table 5)
Summary
Without many of the conventional tools of state for forging an imagined national community, like an army or lingua franca, the European Union has put considerable effort into creating a single market through the adoption of common regulatory frameworks and technical standards. This article responds to that challenge by examining the degree of “practice convergence” (Pollitt 2001) in the organisation of official food safety controls across England, Germany, France and the Netherlands These geographically and politically proximate countries are subject to common EU regulation of their closely integrated agri-food systems. These four countries use starkly different models for assessing the risk of food safety violations and targeting regulatory controls by inspectors. English and German risk assessment models consider both hazard and FBO behaviour and inspectors target a wider range of FBOs than their French and Dutch counterparts This variation in inspection practice is surprising for two reasons. The aim of this article, is to explain why, given the strong pressures for regulatory convergence in food safety regulation around ideas of risk, there is so much variability in the practice of risk-based inspection across our four countries
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