In 2016, the Fitness Check of the EU Birds and Habitats Directives concluded that, in order to reach their most important objectives, the implementation of both directives needed to be improved. This paper analyses the institutional changes that characterise the implementation of the Birds and Habitats Directives in the Netherlands. These institutional changes include revisions of the rules embedded in Dutch nature conservation law, the introduction of new policy instruments, and the emergence of widely shared concepts and additional norms and rules that are used in decision-making procedures. In the first phase of the implementation of these directives, their legal requirements were integrated into national laws. In later years, national aims and rules were gradually removed from conservation law, and new instruments and rules were added. The analysis shows that most important drivers for institutional change were a discourse focusing on ways to stretch the legal requirements of the two directives and the interpretation of key concepts and rules that emerged in assessment and decision-making procedures and court rulings. In sum, these institutional changes have not improved the implementation of the Birds and Habitats Directives and have made it more difficult to ensure the sustainable conservation of species and their habitats in the Netherlands.

2016 年，欧盟鸟类和栖息地指令的健康检查得出结论，为了实现其最重要的目标，需要改进这两个指令的实施。本文分析了荷兰实施鸟类和栖息地指令的制度变化。这些制度变化包括荷兰自然保护法中嵌入的规则的修订、新政策工具的引入以及广泛共享的概念以及决策程序中使用的附加规范和规则的出现。在实施这些指令的第一阶段，其法律要求已被纳入国家法律。后来，国家目标和规则逐渐从保护法中删除，增加了新的文书和规则。分析表明，制度变革的最重要驱动因素是关注如何扩展两个指令的法律要求以及对评估和决策程序以及法院裁决中出现的关键概念和规则的解释的话语。总而言之，这些制度变化并没有改善鸟类和栖息地指令的实施，并且使确保荷兰物种及其栖息地的可持续保护变得更加困难。