Multilevel Coordination and Cooperation during Implementing Supranational Environmental Legislation: A Case Study on Invasive Alien Species
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
there is a fundamental misconception which must be addressed; relations between Member States under EU law are NOT international, because EU is quasi-federal, and art. 4 TEU lays down the principle cooperation
also this is a regulation, cooperation and coordination are NOT elective (Art. 22 IAS regulation has "Member States shall ...". Intersting to know that many bureacrats do not know this but the article needs to fully integrate the normative perspective, with reference to the relevant legal literature
Author Response
Dear reviewer 1,
Thank you for submitting your helpful comments and suggestions! We gladly introduced them into our paper.
In the uploaded word document, after each of your points we added our responses in blue italics.
We also added a version with track changes and another “clean” version with the accepted changes.
Thank you once more and kind regards,
The authors
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper addresses an important topic. The empirical approach is relevant and useful. I will just make a couple of suggestions to improve it:
Materials and methods: the authors do not explain the exact methodology of the questionnaires and the interviews used to collect the empirical data. They refer to previous publications. Taking into consideration that those publications are not open access and methodology issues are fundamental in any empirical study, my suggestion is that the authors give some more information on this in this paper.
Findings and discussion: I kindly suggest the authors to split this section into two. The paper describes the findings very well but in my opinion, there is not properly a legal discussion based on them. My suggestion is that the discussion section addresses the main idea that appears in the abstract: “The national coordination and cooperation are weaker as the ones from the international level, because of the influence of the national competence distribution”. In fact, when explaining the methods, the authors insist that one reason to select the two countries was their different national organizational systems, federally vs. centrally organized states. The discussion section should give some insights on this, as it is a relevant legal issue when analyzing coordination and cooperation. It would be enough to briefly describe the theoretical framework to which this interesting empirical study leads, for those researchers interested in deepening the issue. What are the (constitutional) limits for EU law implementation? Is this study an evidence of it? Has the organizational system any impact on it?
Conclusions: Since the paper focuses on the findings rather than on the legal discussion that can follow them, the conclusions are still part of them. Conclusions could be revised if the authors add the discussion section.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2,
Thank you for submitting your helpful comments and suggestions! We gladly introduced them into our paper.
In the attached word document, after each of your points we added our responses in blue italics.
We also added a version with track changes and another “clean” version with the accepted changes.
Thank you once more and kind regards,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
A good presentation of an empirical study.
Scientific soundness: This is report on a project - nothing more,
nothing less. Both the methodology, as described, and the
presentation look ok.
Novelty: Again, this is report about a joint project. It could be of
interest to the parties involved but I cannot see novel elements -
nor have the authors highlighted any major breakthrough
English: Very good
Overall merit: A decent paper of little interest to others than
those involved in the project. It is, however, well-written and
presented and thus my recommendation to publish it.
All the very best,
MG
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 3,
Thank you for submitting your helpful comments and suggestions! We gladly introduced them into our paper.
In the attached word document, after each of your points we added our responses in blue italics.
We also added a version with track changes and another “clean” version with the accepted changes.
Thank you once more and kind regards,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
just pls check English once more
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for submitting your second round review!
An English check was done and we attach the clean checked version for you.
Thank you once more and kind regards,
The authors
