Special issue:
General Principles of European Administrative Law    

 

Editorial

This issue of the Review of European Administrative Law appears at a most crucial time for Europe and the entire world. While several of the restrictive measures taken by the national governments to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus are being gradually lifted, new legal questions arise, which are relevant for national, comparative and European administrative law. They range from the compatibility of national measures with EU State aid law, the legitimacy of governing through guidelines and other soft measures and the political desirability and feasibility of a European Health Union. Certainly, this crisis has shown many of the weaknesses of the European integration project and, at the same time, the need for more cooperation and coordination between the Member States when faced with wicked global challenges.

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly represented an unprecedented challenge to the European Union and its Member States. However, another challenge which is possibly just as violent – though certainly making fewer headlines than the sanitary crisis –is the 5^th May ruling of the  German Federal Constitutional Court which regarded a ruling of European Court of Justice on the European Central Bank’s Public Sector Purchase Program as being ultra vires, and, consequently, not applicable in Germany.BVerfG, Judgment of the Second Senate of 05 May 2020 - 2 BvR 859/15, ECLI:DE:BVerfG:2020:rs20200505.2bvr085915. This case calls into question the supremacy of EU law, a cornerstone of the complex system of relations between the EU and the Member States, and has the potential, if followed by the courts of other Member States, to shake the very nature of the EU legal order. It is precisely this multilayered web of relations between EU law and national law that is at the core of this issue of the Review of European Administrative Law, which contains a number of contributions showing the influence of the European case law on the development of the national general principles of administrative law. While the process of ‘Europeanisation’ of national public law (and general principles in particular) is an old and well-studied theme, several questions remain open.

As the article of Tridimas shows, key issues regarding the definition, nature and role as a source of law of general principles remain unresolved. Several contributions to this issue demonstrate, furthermore, that the interaction between European case law and general principles is a dynamic one, constantly in flux. Renewed attention on well-established principles of EU law such as the duty of care (Hofmann) and the principle of effective judicial protection (Prechal) are also offered in the issue. Finally, the issue contains a number of examples of the several ‘shades of Europeanisation’ of general principles: the principle of transparency (Drahmann) and the precautionary principle (Kegge) in Dutch law, the principle of legitimate expectations in Spanish law (Arroyo Jiménez and Doménech Pascual), the principle of proportionality in the laws of Sweden, Finland and Denmark (Wenander) and in the Italian legal system (Borriello).

This issue is closed with three reviews of books which, again, examine questions going to the core of the decentralized system of implementation and application of EU law – public procurement, access to information, and the practical workings of the preliminary ruling procedure.

Because of its European and comparative focus, this issue is quite exemplary of what the Review of European Administrative Law aims to establish: a vibrant, passionate, broad community of European and comparative administrative lawyers. 

Mariolina Eliantonio