Chiti, Edoardo --- "EU administrative law in an international perspective" [2017] ELECD 434; in Harlow, Carol; Leino, Päivi; della Cananea, Giacinto (eds), "Research Handbook on EU Administrative Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 545

Book Title: Research Handbook on EU Administrative Law

Editor(s): Harlow, Carol; Leino, Päivi; della Cananea, Giacinto

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784710675

Section: Chapter 22

Section Title: EU administrative law in an international perspective

Author(s): Chiti, Edoardo

Number of pages: 27

Abstract/Description:

As the EU administrative machinery has gradually emerged as a system made up of EU and national administrations into a looser structure of ‘distributed public governance’, EU administrative law has developed as a complex web of EU and national principles, rules and practices governing the organization and functioning of such a composite administrative system. EU and national norms have not operated as two separate, non-communicating bodies of administrative law. Quite on the contrary, they have interacted one with the other in several ways. At least three forces have been at work in this process. One has been the tendency of EU law to shape national administrative laws in such a way as to enhance the effectiveness of indirect execution of EU legislations and policies, well beyond the original commitment to respect Member States’ administrative autonomy. A second force has been the influence exercised by national administrative laws on the principles and rules governing the functioning of the Commission and the other EU administrative bodies. A third force has been the ‘horizontal’ or reciprocal opening of Member States’ administrative laws, with functions ranging from cooperation to latent or open competition, as in the case of the pharmaceutical products regime. What effects have been and still are in the process of being produced by these multiple interactions between EU and national principles, rules and practices, is a disputed and controversial issue.