‘As time goes by’: Explaining the transposition of maritime directives1

The aim of this article is to explain the speed with which Member States transpose EC directives in the maritime sector. By discussing earlier work, the focus is on explanatory factors related to the contents of the directive that needs to be transposed and the context within which national transposition takes place. The authors' expectations have been tested using data across seven Member States and 32 maritime directives. Using survival analysis based on Cox regression, several political‐administrative and legal factors are identified that have an impact on the speed of transposition. The political sensitivity of the directive and the total number of national implementing measures lengthens the duration of transposition, while the degree of specialisation of the directive, the use of package law and experience speed up transposition. The authors also find that the impact of some of these explanatory factors changes over time. This underscores the importance of taking time seriously and to explore time dependency in further theoretical work on explaining policy‐making processes.