Evolution, Content, Functions, Effectiveness, and Enforcement of the Pan-European General Principles of Good Administration of the Council of Europe

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ulrich Stelkens
• Subject Area: Public Law
• Term: since 2015
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 274964159

The project aims to explore the evolution, the content, the functions, the effectiveness and the possibilities of enforcing the pan-European principles of good administration. These are expressed in the rich trove of international conventions of the Council of Europe (CoE), recommendations of the Committee of Ministers of the CoE, resolutions of its other various bodies (such as the Venice Commission) and the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). These sources often refer to and build upon each other. They from a ‘coherent whole’, specifying as a ‘package’ concrete legal requirements for the administrative law of the CoE Member States in order to legitimize administrative action and to ensure the respect of the rule of law and individual rights by the administration.‘Phase 1’ of the project, completed in 2020, took stock of the sources of the pan-European principles of good administration, identified their range and the topics they cover and analysed their harmonizing effect and its limits for the administrative law of the CoE Member States and, thus, their effectiveness within these legal orders. This was done with the help of experts from 28 CoE Member States. A state practice was identified according to which these principles, as a ‘package’, concretise the founding values of the CoE as mentioned in Article 3 of the Statute of the CoE (SCoE). Thus, these principles are binding upon the CoE Member States as regional international law. Their development is the result of the CoE Member States' common historical experience with regard to the requirements of a ‘good’ administrative law. However, as a ‘package’, these principles leave a wide margin of appreciation to the CoE Member States as to how and to what extent these principles are to be implemented into the national legal system. In particular, they do not lead to the harmonisation of the (considerable) differences in the "administrative legal mindsets" of the CoE Member States.Building on this, the current ‘phase 2’ of the project aims to explain the content and function of the different pan-European general principles of good administration, topic by topic, from the perspective of different European administrative legal cultures and ‘illustrated’ with material from the case law of the ECtHR, the reports of the CoE institutions as well as national and Union law sources. This presentation can provide both a point of reference for comparative administrative law and background information for examining whether and to what extent the concrete ‘configuration’ of national administrative law respects the limits of Article 3 SCoE. Furthermore, the project will analyse whether the pan-European general legal principles of good administration ‘as a package’ are also an expression of general principles of Union law and whether and by what means the European Union (EU) can enforce and promote their observance both vis-à-vis EU Member States and its Associated European Partner States.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Yseult Marique, Ph.D.