Seven Challenges for EU Administrative Law

Abstract

This contribution has the objective to reflect on existing and impending challenges to EU public law from an administrative perspective. This will be undertaken against the fast-paced developments of the past 50 years linking various levels of government and administration in the Member States and the EU to administrative networks which are active also on the international scene. In this context, European administrative law has grown and evolved and has become an important, yet often not very fully understood, factor shaping the reality of policy implementation in the EU. 1 An Administrative Perspective on EU Law – Changing Perspectives of EU Administrative Law European integration through law is highly dynamic process. This paper makes an attempt to contribute to the thinking about EU public law by contextualising and giving an overview of some of the central aspects of the evolving scholarship necessary to tackle the challenges to the EU’s future as a legal system from an administrative law perspective. After an initial flourishing in legal literature and case law in the founding period of the European integration process, especially in the context of the ECSC, administrative law virtually disappeared from the horizon of EU legal scholars. The initial administrative perspective on European integration was a rather restricted and even tendentious one. In the context of the original EEC it was often associated more with the aim of denying the ‘state’ quality of the E(E)C than of attempting to encompass the real nature of legal relations within the early European Communities. The disappearance of this administrative perspective can be largely traced to the interest herwig.hofmann@uni.lu This paper is a footnoted version of a presentation I gave at the First REALaw research conference in Groningen on June 3, 009. I would like to especially thank Gerard Rowe for investing much of his time into developing and clarifying the ideas contained in this article. Many others have generously contributed their time to discussing the ideas therein. This came to be known under the idea of the Communities being the Member States’ special purpose vehicle or ‚Zweckverband’ for achieving certain limited policy goals. See for example H.P. Ipsen, Zur Exekutivrechtsetzung in der Europaischen Gemeinschaft, in: P. Badura, R. Scholz (eds.), Wege und Verfahren des Verfassungslebens (Beck Verlag, Munchen, 993), 4 5-44 .