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Administrative justice and the rule of law have often been in tension. However, they have converged over time as the scope of administrative justice and the conceptions of the rule of law have shifted. This chapter starts with the historical connections between administrative justice and the rule of law. It then maps ways in which the rule of law is expressed when ad-ministrative justice is embedded within administrative organization and when it is organized as a system external to the administration. This approach highlights the diversity of technical solutions to recurring questions across three major administrative systems (namely England, France, and the United States). This analysis also leads to highlighting two new challenges for the rule of law: first, how the rule of law responds to various forms of increasing administra-tive repression, and second, how the rule of law responds to globalization at a time when no coherent global administrative justice system exists.
Une lecture belge du Brexit: droit et politique au Royaume-Uni, une grande démocratie contemporaine
(2021)
discusses Brexit from a comparative constitutional perspective
Proportionality in English Administrative Law: Resistance and Strategy in Relational Dynamics
(2021)
Proportionality is at the centre of heated debates in English administrative law. It has been adopted for matters pertaining to European law and the European Convention on Human Rights, but its use in other areas parts of English administrative law is highly contentious. While some arguments in favour or against applying proportionality in England are similar to those exchanged in relation to other legal systems (such as tensions between increased objectivity in judicial control over administrative action vs. the desirability of more limited control), other arguments are more specific to English administrative law. To understand the challenges encountered by proportionality in English administrative law, this paper adopts a contextual analysis, putting the emphasis on the relational dynamics framing the interactions between the main actors involved in the proportionality test. Paradoxically, this perspective rehabilitates the analysis of the legal techniques behind transplants such as proportionality: indeed, transplants are vehicles for legal changes in ways that go beyond the circulation of ideas across the world. Instead of being merely superficial and rhetorical, transplants engage deeply with the whole gamut of institutions and actors in a legal system, calling on them to rearticulate their implied and explicit relationships.
This note aims to provide a critical defintion of "sustancial changes" in the sense of the EU 2014/24 Directive on public procurement. (in Dutch)
Proportionaliteit
(2020)
This note aims to provide a short critical definition of the principle of proportionality as it is used in the EU procurement (in Dutch).
Onderaanneming
(2020)
This note aims to provide a short critical assessment of the regulation of supply chain in EU procurement (in Dutch).
Sous-traitance
(2020)
This note aims to provide a short critical assessment of the regulation of supply chain in EU procurement (in French).
Proportionnalité
(2020)
This note aims to provide a short critical definition of the principle of proportionality as it is used in the EU procurement (in French).
Modification du contrat
(2020)
This note aims to provide a critical defintion of "sustancial changes" in the sense of the EU 2014/24 Directive on public procurement. (in French)
This contribution examines how checks and balances can be organised so that individual freedoms of users in the digital space are protected from encroachment by platforms. Indeed, platforms are quasi-states which enjoy legislative, judiciary and executive powers. This merging of functions in the hands of one single entity illustrates the failure of the liberal attempt at setting up a cyberspace free of sovereign power: platforms are the new sovereign. Modern thinkers like Foucault and Habermas have examined how sovereigns in the past have seen their powers curtailed and the role that the birth of two distinct spheres, one public and one private, has played in this process. Traditional public economic law builds on this public-private dichotomy, leaving little room to conceptualize hybrids. Yet this paper shows that platforms are such hybrids. Building on an analysis of the activities taking places on platforms, as well as the rights at stake in platform governance, it finds that platforms’ immaterial locus is both political and economic, bundling public and private powers. Hence, this paper puts forward the idea that public economic law should seek to develop mirroring hybrid counter-powers: civil society especially should be conceptualized in the digital space, with its rights, duties and responsibilities, to foster balanced relationships between the various actors on platforms.
This paper asks which legal tools digital operators could use to manage colliding rights on their platforms in a digitalised and transnational space such as the Internet. This space can be understood as a “modern public square”, bringing together actions in the digitalised world and their interactions with actual events in the physical world. It is then useful to provide this space with a discursive framework allowing for discussing and contesting actions happening on it. In particular, this paper suggests that two well-known legal concepts, proportionality and sanctions, can be helpfully articulated within that discursive framework. In a first step, proportionality, a justificatory tool, is often used to suggest a way for managing colliding rights. This paper argues that for proportionality to be useful in managing colliding rights on digital platforms, its role, scope and limits need to be better framed and supplemented by an overall digital environment which can feed into the proportionality test in an appropriate way. This can be provided, thanks to a second step, namely labelling in law the actions digital operators take as sanctions. Sanctions are the reactions organised by digital operators to bring back social order on the platforms. The labelling of these reactions under the legal category of “sanctions” offers a meaningful tool for thinking about what digital operators do when they manage colliding rights by blocking or withdrawing contents and/or accounts. As different types of sanctions can be distinguished, differentiated legal consequences, especially in relation to managing colliding rights, can be identified. Here the role played by the proportionality test can be distinguished depending on the type of sanctions.
In any case, for sanctions and proportionality to help address colliding rights on the modern public square, a discursive framework needs to be developed, which depends on the existence of relevant meaningful communities engaging in reflecting on the use of sanctions and proportionality.
From a comparative perspective the Covid-19 pandemic provides a unique grand-scale life experience: nearly all countries have been confronted with a similar issue, that of quickly fighting the pandemic, balancing individual health with the sustainability of the national health system, and juggling economic imperatives with the duty to care for the most vulnerable individuals in society. Access and use of data are key to this difficult balancing exercise. One question arises: is the Covid-19 pandemic conducive to developing shared legal strategies or does it reinforce cultural legal features when it comes to data protection?
Blogdroiteuropeen asked experts in data protection to reflect on key developments in their national systems. No definitive answer is possible as Covid-19 is not over yet. However, this preliminary information leads to the identification of six trends underlying the Covid-19 crisis and its impact on data protection. First, all countries were not equal before the pandemic due to differences in their factual and legal backgrounds. Secondly, constitutional techniques proved resilient to a large extent in general and in particular when it comes to data protection. Thirdly, the effectiveness of data protection legislation is connected to its embeddedness in the wider legal context. Fourthly, tracking the spread of Covid-19 through tracing apps may turn out to be a unicorn defeated by data protection even though different technologies have been attempted. Fifthly, aggregation of data or collective harvesting of data in some form has been implemented to very different extents, provided some data protection requirements are met. This leads to the final trend: the ever more articulated pressure on the European Union to decide how far it wants to reclaim its digital sovereignty, and what this would entail concretely. As legal systems may have to cope with the long-term consequences of Covid-19 all over the world it may be useful to take stock of these emerging trends before designing any grand scheme for post-Covid-19 society.
Against a background of extensive literature examining how digital platforms are regulated through ‘soft’ mechanisms, this paper analyses the ‘hard law’ techniques, such as sanctions, which are also very much used on digital platforms to police undesirable behaviours.
It illustrates the use of these sanctions, suggesting that it is possible to find three different categories of sanctions: sanctions that find their source in hard (international and domestic) law, sanctions that find their source in digital platforms’ own normative production, and sanctions used in the course of disputes. Platform operators can have an intense power of norm-setting and sanctions, with a tendency to concentrate power within themselves or with unclear arrangements for dividing it across different entities. This can deeply affect individual freedoms. This paper suggests that the ways in which the power to set, decide and enforce sanctions is exercised in the digital space transform the public–private divide: the allocation of roles between sovereign public bodies and free private actors is reshaped to become ‘hybrid’ when it comes to enforcing rules and monitoring compliance through a wide range of sanctions on digital platforms. This paper frames the legitimacy questions arising from sanctions and suggests that the public–private divide may have to be bridged in order to locate a possible source of legitimacy. A future framework for assessing how platform operators set norms and ensure compliance through sanctions needs to start from individual users to see how best to protect their freedom when checks and balances around platforms’ powers and sanctions are developed. These individual users are the ones who suffer from the economic, social and reputational consequences of sanctions in both the digital world and the physical world.
En prenant pour repère le droit administratif français, cet ouvrage propose une approche comparée des droits des administrations de cinq États européens : l’Allemagne, l’Espagne, l’Italie, les Pays-Bas et le Royaume-Uni.
Une telle exploration horizontale a paru nécessaire, à l’heure où la doctrine européenne reconnaît l’émergence d’un droit administratif européen et que l’influence croissante des droits de l’Union européenne et du Conseil de l’Europe sur le droit de leurs États membres semble bien identifiée. L’intensité des échanges, notamment économiques, sociaux et culturels, se renforce entre ceuxci et impose une meilleure connaissance et compréhension réciproque. C’est particulièrement vrai pour le droit administratif dont « l’intelligence interne » – pour reprendre l’expression de Jean Rivero – se comprend à l’aune des influences croisées (européennes, transnationales, etc.) comme à celles des spécificités de l’histoire et des traditions juridiques nationales.
C’est afin de rendre compte de la richesse de cette construction que ce manuel offre une présentation claire des concepts, des techniques et des régimes juridiques qui articulent le droit des administrations dans les cinq Étatstypes étudiés. Il donne aux étudiants, praticiens et universitaires, les outils pédagogiques et analytiques afin de mieux comprendre les mutations actuelles des droits publics nationaux et européens.
UK report
(2017)
UK report in XL Table ronde organised by Aix-en-provence Centre de recherches administratives on 3rd-4th November 2017 on Citizens-administration: 40 years of evolution (summary available here: https://europeancommonwealth.org/2017/11/21/account-citizens-administration-40-years-of-administrative-reforms-aix-en-provence/). Paper to be submitted in April 2018 – for publication in Annuaire européen d’administration publique.
I-CONN Conference, 5th July, Copenhagen, Panel coordinated by C. Colombo and M. Eliantonio (“The Changing nature of the public administration; what role of judicial review?”). Paper from this presentation to be published with S Van Garsse under the title ‘Revisiting judicial review in the face of the changing nature of public administration – A case study drawn from European infrastructure projects’, submitted to European Public Law (special issue) (guest editors: Dr C Colombo and Dr M Eliantonio) (second stage of proof-reading).
Transparency in France
(2017)
European Conference Public Administration (EGPA), Milan, 30th August-1st September, panel on Law and Administration (organised by D Drago, B Marseille and P Kovac). Paper from this presentation to be published with E Slautsky, ‘Freedom of Information in France’, in D Drago, B Marseille and P Kovac (eds), The Laws of Transparency in Action: A European Perspective (Palgrave) (ca. 17,000 words, submitted), a significantly longer version of this paper is available on ResearchGate and SSRN (ca. 22,000 words). The SSRN paper was included in the Top Ten List for “PSN: Public Administration (Institutions)” on 04.10.2017 and in the Top Ten List for “International Administrative Law eJournal” on 19.10.2017.
Workshop organised in Rome by Professor G. della Cananea (Common core principles of administrative law, 1st December). Summary available here: https://europeancommonwealth.org/2018/01/08/account-workshop-fin-de-siecle-administrative-law-judicial-standards-for-public-authorities-1890-1910/. Paper will be submitted later in 2018 for publication in an edited volume.
Conférence organised by the Centre of Public Law, ULB, Brussels, 29th November (summary here: https://blogdroiteuropeen.com/tag/dumping-social/). Paper from this presentation to be published with K Wauters, ‘Sous-traitance et dumping social dans les marchés publics belges – De la substitution régulatoire à la juxtaposition des paradigmes?’, Marchés et contrats publics (special number on social dumping).