Capacity or Preferences? Explaining the Implementation of the European Integration Fund

The integration of migrants has been on the EU agenda for quite some time without attracting major attention amongst political scientists. Now that the implementation of the European Integration Fund -allegedly the most significant instrument in this policy realm- is over, only 80 per cent of the funding available has actually been engaged by EU member states, much less than for the structural funds. The present study looks into the determinants of this implementation gap. Drawing from the literature on structural funds and compliance, it tests the effect of capacity against preferences in a comparative fashion. Strong support is found for capacity factors and none for preferences. Even so, not all aspects of capacity matter. Empirical evidence is drawn from the application of time-series cross-section methods to an original dataset.