Having elaborated on characteristics and dynamics of administrative traditions in Germany and Britain, it is the objective of this part to assess and illustrate the validity of our analytical assumptions on the change and persistence of national administrative styles and structures. To do so, the focus is on the implementation of EU environmental policy. For analytical purposes, five pieces of European legislation are considered which reflect the broad regulatory variety to be found in the environmental field and therefore cover a broad range of different administrative implications. Moreover, the five policies are selected in such a way, that their institutional adaptation requirements are ‘symmetrically’ distributed between the two countries under study.