Short review

Droit administratif européen. Edited by Jean-Bernard Auby and Jacqueline Dutheil de la Rochère. Brussels: Bruylant, 2007. Pp. 1136. €145,00.

Reviewed by Stephan Neidhardt, Maître en droit, LL.M., Berlin.

The debate about the future of the European Constitution since the clash of the French and Dutch referenda in 2005 has partly eclipsed the interest for the administrative dimension of European integration. Considering the given situation of an enduring blockade in the European institutional reform process, the editors of the present handbook propose to rather focus on another essential aspect of the European integration project: The development of mechanisms belonging to a European Administrative law, where the “work still is in progress”[cf. p. 20].

 

Their concept of this particular branch of EC law not only comprises administrative rules and institutions, which the EC itself provides, but the forty-three authors of the book also treat diverse questions arising in face of the growing influence of EC law on the administrative law systems of the member states. In its first half, the book presents the actors and instruments of the administrative law on the EC level [Section 1], the modes of administration of EC law by EC and national institutions [Section 2] and the general principles of European administrative law [Section 3]. Its second half deals with the general influences of EC law on national administrative law [Section 4], the different mechanisms that national administrative law uses to make EC law effective [Section 5] and the particular influences of EC law on special branches of French administrative law [Section 6]. A short concluding section refers to the problem of the convergence of member states’ national administrative law systems under the influence of European administrative law [Section 7].

 

The fact, that the editors have won a large number of specialists in the field of European administrative law to expose these various matters of that dynamic branch of EC law is an advantage on the one hand, but on the other, it is partly inconvenient regarding the book’s general conception:

Almost all of the articles give a concise and competent overview of the questions treated by their respective authors. That is a lot to say in a book of more than a thousand pages, featuring a compilation of contributions by forty-three authors. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the considerable “reservoir” of expertise on particular questions has the consequence of perfectly exposing a great number of details, sometimes at the expense of general appreciations on the future of the European administrative law construction process - despite the short introductory chapters to each part of the book.

 

This shortcoming is particularly illustrated by the fact that its last section - referring to the general debate on the advantages and problems of a further convergence between national administrative laws under European influence - consists of only two contributions:

Neither Marie Gautier’s article on the “Acte administratif transnational” nor Catherine M. Donnelly’s interesting comparison of the federal US Administrative law system with the relationship between EC law and member states’ administrative law directly treats the central issue of the European Administrative law debate: To what extent do we need - and do we want - convergence between the various national Administrative laws in Europe to continue the European integration process. The editor’s short introductory note to this concluding section seems to opt for a limited harmonisation of member state’s Administrative laws in the future; the point could have deserved further exploration.

 

There certainly is no lack of competent information in this book, but there seems to be a certain lack of room for the authors to express their views on the process as a whole. As a handbook on the various facets of the European integration process in the field of administrative law, the book gives an excellent overview on the multitude of questions that this process generated for member states, with a natural focus on the consequences for French administrative law. However, the reader who searches for a synthesis on the European Administrative law, or looks for controversy and critical appreciation should direct his interest to other works of the participating authors, especially to Auby’s “La globalisation, le droit et l’Etat” [Paris: Montchrestien, 2003].