Objective
Despite the ambitions of the EU Green Deal, many environmental directives lose effectiveness long before reaching local practice. The problem is not only political or administrative, but structural: obligations often become inapplicable due to poor transposition, procedural gaps, or institutional mismatches. Yet current scholarship largely assumes that once adopted, a directive remains legally binding throughout the governance chain.
ENACT addresses Regulatory Attenuation by tracing how EU environmental obligations weaken or dissolve as they descend from Union law to municipal practice. Whereas existing research has focused on compliance or enforcement outcomes, ENACT studies the legal life-cycle of norms themselves. Its central hypothesis is that structural design features—such as vague delegation, procedural incompleteness, or misalignment with competences—are decisive predictors of whether obligations retain binding force. To date, no general theory conceptualises the loss of legal force as a structural phenomenon. ENACT fills this gap at a crucial moment, as the Union multiplies legislation under the Green Deal.
The project’s aim is to develop a generalisable explanatory model—Normative Entropy Theory—that accounts for the dissipation of legal force in multilevel governance. First, I will identify the structural traits that drive attenuation by reconstructing the life-cycle of obligations from the Waste Framework Directive and the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. Spain will serve as a high-resolution case to detect attenuation patterns across internal jurisdictions. Comparisons with Italy and Ireland will test whether these mechanisms travel across systems or remain context-dependent.
ENACT will redefine how legal effectiveness in the EU is understood. Beyond diagnosing where norms weaken, it will propose drafting solutions to prevent attenuation and enhance the resilience of EU legislation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2026-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
15001 La Coruna
Spain
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.