Much of the EU’s statutory output is soft rather than hard law. These non-enforceable instruments signal commitment to policy goals while maintaining flexibility and overcoming conflict in decision-making. However, they can undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of the EU if they emerge when political gridlock blocks the passage of hard laws, which in turn can be driven by public opposition. To examine this, the paper aims to establish whether and, if so, how public preferences on EU policy involvement affect the relative level of soft law adoption. We expect the EU legislators to be averse to adopting hard law and to opt for more soft law instead when faced with negative public opinion towards EU involvement in a policy area, especially given high public salience. However, we expect the effect of public opposition to be conditional - when faced with an elevated level of non-compliance in a policy area, the EU legislators may nevertheless adopt more binding legislation to reach policy goals, irrespective of public opinion. We use Eurobarometer time-series data on public opinion, EU soft and hard law and infringement cases across different policy areas to test our hypotheses. In doing so, we show whether the debate on the responsiveness of the EU can be translated to choices between legal instruments with various levels of flexibility.
