Beyond legal transposition: regulatory agencies and de facto convergence of EU rail liberalization

Notwithstanding its maturity, the literature on European Union (EU) compliance tends to overlook the implementation stages beyond the legal transposition of single-market regulatory reforms. This article explains the cross-national variation in the actual implementation of the EU regulatory reform of rail market among the EU-15. The empirical findings highlight the importance of the establishment of national regulatory agencies. Member states with an independent regulatory agency converge faster towards the EU model of liberalization. This conditional effect of EU railway harmonization is enhanced by the presence of new entrants that activate the institutional functions of national independent agencies as enforcers of EU legislation.