Private Power and Public Authority in European Union Law

Abstract

European union law is currently undergoing a transformation as profound as that forged by the ‘1992’ project which prompted the article by Joseph Weiler of that name. If that project was an intensification and broadening of EC law making, this new transformation is altogether of a more subtle nature. On the one hand, there is a commitment to a drastic reduction in the number of EU laws on the statute book. About one third of Union legislation is to be repealed, recast, modified or simplified. Alongside this, one finds an expansion of pan–European norms. In 2003, the main European standardisation body, CEN, adopted 888 standards. This one year’s work equated to more than were adopted in the whole period prior to the end of 1992. One view might be that this is some ‘retreat by the state’. These types of norms are developed by private actors, and maybe a simple privatisation of the legislative process is taking place. This explanation is unconvincing, however. Studies in other fields have found private law making to be accompanied by more pervasive and further reaching forms of administrative intervention.