No polity, be it national or supranational, can prevail if its community contests the legitimacy of its policies. Unlike conflicts over European integration, compliance with individual EU policies rarely reaches a high media profile, which has enabled domestic actors to implement policies away from the public eye. However, the politicization of the EU has fundamentally changed the politics of compliance, increasing public awareness about the impact of EU law on domestic policy. In such politicized settings, national governments could engage in different strategies to exonerate themselves from culpability when implementing contested supranational policies. Thus, justification strategies are an important source of responsiveness for domestic actors.
In this study, we analyze the effectiveness of different justifications for compliance with supranational policies on the perceived legitimacy of implementation. Whereas a common strategy is to shift the blame to the EU, citizens may perceive this as less legitimate if the responsibility of implementation lies in domestic institutions. Based on a survey experiment, we assess whether defending compliance with supranational policies increases the perceived legitimacy of implementation relative to blame-shifting or being silent about compliance. Our findings have implications for democratic accountability of domestic actors and the future of EU policymaking.