RICERCA ITALIANA     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EUROPEAN ADMINISTRATIVE LAW AND GLOBAL ADMINISTRATIVE LAW

Università degli Studi di Siena

Abstract

The subject matter of the proposed research is that one of the relationships between European administrative law and global administrative law.
In the last two decades, European administrative law has gone through a process of extraordinary development and consolidation. It is commonly and thoroughly studied. However, it is usually studied in its internal dimension, with a particular focus on its relations with national law, but not on its relations with other forms of supranational law.
Research on global administrative law represents a more recent development. It may be said to be only at a preliminary stage. This research has been started by some groups of scholars from different countries, in connection with each other: among these groups, an Italian one, which refers to the teaching of Sabino Cassese and organizes a yearly colloquium, the Global Administrative Law Seminar, in a Viterbo. A number of scholars from different continets take part to the coloquium. The next Viterbo seminars will be a perfect occasion to present and discuss the results of the proposed research.
The two mentioned components of administrative law beyond the State – European administrative law and global administrative law – have been studied so far as two parallel bodies of law. Little attention has been paid to their «horizontal» relationships, while the analysis of «vertical» relationships between national administrative law and, respectively, European and global >>>

Principal Investigator

Bernardo Giorgio Mattarella Università degli Studi di SIENA

Research Objectives

The subject matter of the proposed research is that one of the relationships between European administrative law and global administrative law.
The relationships between EU law and global law that are established in these and other hypotheses raises two groups of problems.
Firstly, which game of forces characterizes, in the sectors where such relationships take place, the interaction between global administrative law, European administrative law and national administrative law? To which extent are European administrations subject to European law and to global law? And to which extent are national administrations subject to national law, European law and global law? Is there opposition or communication among the three «levels»? Does European law filter the relations among the EU member States and global regulation? And what principles govern the co-existence among the various components of the legal discipline?
Secondly, what is the result of such game of forces? Does the interaction among global, European and national regulation give place to an architecture reproducing the traditional paradigm of statal administrative law, centred on the fundamental opposition between authority and freedom and on coercion and authoritative powers? Or does it respond to a different design, which cannot be fully traced back to the administrative experience of the States? In this case, in what ways do the usual forms of statal administrative law combine with the forms >>>

First Results

The subject of the proposed research is quite an original one, as shown by the little bibliography. The predicted results is a collection of essays, written both by the research units' coordinators and by younger researchers, to be published in one or more books, and maybe in electronic revies, both in Italian and in English.
The results of the research might interest the European administrative law scholars, which are numerous in all member States and even outside of Europe, as well as the global administrative law scholars, which are not so numerous but constitute an international community which is now quite a large one. This community gathers around some groups of scholars (such as the Italian one, which proposes this research) and some yearly seminars (such as the VIterbo one, previously mentioned).
The group of scholars, which proposes the research, has already performed several research, directed by Sabino Cassese, also in the areas of European administrative law and - more recently - global administrative law. It has connections with some of the best European and American scholars involved in the same fields of study. The experience gathered and the performed studies place the Italian legal doctrince in a privileged position in the study of this emerging, but already important, area of legal research. The proposed project aims at moving on this path of excellence and reinforce those cooperations.

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

In the last two decades, European administrative law has gone through a process of extraordinary development and consolidation. It first developed as a body of principles and institutes aimed at regulating, on the one hand, the action of the supranational public powers (such as, for example, the action of the Commission in the fields of State aids and competition), on the other hand, the action of the national administrations operating as decentralized Community agencies (for example, the action of national public administrations in the field of public procurements). Subsequently, it has gradually developed in such a way to apply to the several phenomena of organizational and procedural interconnections among national and European authorities. As a matter of fact, the EU legal order has elaborated a great variety of mechanisms of integration and composition of organizations and activities, establishing a variety of «European common systems» by sector, made up of national, European and mixed authorities jointly responsible for the administrative implementation of an increasing number of European rules and policies. The Italian legal science has devoted a great deal of attention to such highly complex and differentiated body of European administrative law. It is no exaggeration to say that only a minority of the administrative law studies produced by Italian legal science does not take into consideration European law. Some Authors, moreover, has tried to provide an overall >>>