Samenvatting

This article examines the impact of the EU on the content of policy. It analyses two cases in which the EU affected Dutch policies in different ways: in the case of packaging waste policy the EU exerted direct influence through EU legislation, whereas in the case of railway policy, the EU only had an indirect impact through policy models. Nevertheless, the impact of the EU was greater in the railway policy case than in the packaging waste case. This suggests that domestic political processes are more important in explaining the impact of the EU on policy content, than the degree of legal adaptation pressure. In addition, the article shows that the EU has affected the policy networks in the area of packaging waste policy, even though Dutch corporatist structures have shown remarkable resilience and have even been strengthened by the implementation requirements of EU legislation in this field.