This book describes the transformative power of the European Union in the area of gender
equality policy in Poland and Germany from 2004 until 2012. It gives the readers an insight
into the process of implementing EU law and the major actors and variables which influence this
process and its outcome. The book includes an analysis of national law from the perspective of
the implementation of EU directives as well as interviews with experts in this area. It
identifies the main actors that support or block the law's implementation as well as the
sociocultural conditioning of the process of implementation and its final outcome in both
countries. This shows that every Member State due to its unique configuration of national
actors and conditions develops a different final way of implementing the same EU law and
therefore the transformative power of the EU leads to divergent outcomes in different Member
States.
