This pioneering Research Handbook provides a comprehensive and in-depth scholarly overview of the field of soft law, exploring the scope of current thinking in the field as well as proposing future pathways for soft law research. Organized into four broad themes, the Research Handbook offers important and unique insights into the dynamic and complex nature of soft law. The first section delves into the conceptual history and development of soft law. Second, the Handbook explores the disciplinary understandings of soft law, examining how scholars from different fields investigate the topic. The third theme focuses on the public and private actors and institutions involved in soft law-making, providing a detailed analysis of the complex relationships that shape soft law. Finally, the fourth theme explores the role of soft law in addressing major global societal challenges, including among others climate change, gender inequality, and the regulation of artificial intelligence. This Research Handbook will be a key resource for students and scholars in constitutional and administrative law, public international law, regulation and governance, public administration and policy, and law and politics. Practitioners and policymakers seeking to better understand the role of soft law in domestic and international law, policy and governance will also find this book beneficial.

This timely book examines the field of European and global standardisation, showing how standards give rise to a multitude of different legal questions. Each chapter offers in-depth analysis of a number of key policy areas such as food safety, accounting, telecommunications and medical devices. These multi-disciplinary contributions go beyond the field of law, and provide cross-disciplinary comparisons. Demonstrating how standards enter the European legal system in a variety of ways, the book studies their relevance for public and private law alike. While the trade advantages of using standards in regulation are undeniable, the contributors elucidate how standard-setting processes have departed from the purely private realm to enter the stage of public regulation. This inevitably raises the issue of whether standardisation is supported by sufficient legitimacy guarantees. The contributions provide valuable insights to answering this question, highlighting cross-cutting reflections on the topic, and case studies on specific policy areas. This analytical book will be of interest to students and scholars researching in the fields of EU and global standardisation, EU law and trade law. It will also be a useful resource for practitioners focusing on regulation and standardisation. Contributors include: D. Bevilacqua, M. Cantero Gamito, C. Cauffman, P. Cuccuru, M. De Bellis, M. Eliantonio, M. Faure, M. Gerardy, C. Glinski, N. Philipsen, S. Roettger-Wirtz, P. Rott, S. Schoenmaekers, L. Senden, B. Van Leeuwen, A. Volpato

This book provides a comparative analysis of the concept and concrete application of the system of indirect review of administrative action. The indirect review of administrative action is a judicial review mechanism that permits re-visiting already settled administrative measures. As an indirect way of challenging the validity of a measure or act by attacking the legal basis on which it is founded, it can regard either general acts or individual acts and measures. This book explores whether the system of indirect review is a suitable remedy for modern administrative justice, assessing whether it fairly balances the legality and the legal certainty principles. It examines the tension between the two principles and seeks to establish what the standards of review are and whether a common European trend can be discerned by analysing the theory and practice from jurisdictions in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as the EU legal system. The book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of Administrative Law, EU law, and Public Administration.

The principle of effective judicial protection ('PEJP') is specifically provided for in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights Article 47. But how effective is the provision and the protection it affords? This ambitious, innovative project examines that question over two volumes. In the first volume an expert team explores how the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has interpreted the PEJP, as expressed in particular by Article 47, in selected policy areas, and reflects on the impact of the principle on the EU's constitutional structure. Taking both a horizontal interpretation, analysing the constitutional themes in play, and a vertical one, which looks at the Court's interpretation in specific policy areas, it shows the interplay of the protection within the wider architecture of the EU. Addressing key questions such as legal certainty, judicial autonomy and division of competences, it significantly adds to our understanding of judicial protection within the EU.

The European Union has succeeded in bringing into force an impressive package of regulatory measures aiming to provide a high level of environmental protection across the EU. As a result, scholars, students and practitioners are confronted with the challenge of gaining insight into this complex legislative framework and its effects. This wide-ranging Research Handbook investigates a multitude of substantive issues including waste, nature conservation, air pollution, water quality protection, chemical substantives and genetically modified organisms. Based on contributions developed by 40 environmental law scholars, this comprehensive Research Handbook discusses how the EU has used its regulatory power to steer towards environmentally friendly behaviour, delving into the deep concerns related to the compliance with and enforcement of EU environmental law. It also highlights the important role of civil society?s use of environmental procedural rights, and characterizes how the CJEU case law has contributed to the effective implementation of EU environmental legislation. Shedding light on the institutional, horizontal and sectoral dimensions of EU environmental law, the Research Handbook on EU Environmental Law will be a key resource for environmental law scholars both in the EU and worldwide, whilst also being of value to environmental law practitioners working in EU member states.

This comparative book explores the dynamics driving how courts across Europe and beyond understand and analyse scientific information in nature conservation. The Habitats and the Birds Directives-the core of EU nature conservation law-are usually seen as the most 'uniform' parts of EU environmental law. This book analyses the case law from 11 current and former EU Member States' courts and explores the dynamics of how, and crucially why, their understandings of scientific uncertainty on the one hand, and EU environmental principles on the other, vary. The courts' scope and depth of review, access to scientific knowledge, and scientific literacy all influence such decisions-as does their interpretation of norms and principles. How have the courts evaluated scientific evidence, encompassing its essential uncertainties? This book answers this and many more questions pertinent to EU environmental law, comparative environmental law, administrative law, and STS studies. Co-edited by experienced leaders in the field, and with outstanding contributors, this book is an essential guide to the dynamics of nature conservation law.

In various European countries such as France, Italy, and the Netherlands, lawmakers have adopted legislation in order to deal with the consequences of the economic crisis. These laws contain provisions aimed at speeding up administrative decision making and judicial proceedings which have an impact on various provisions of general administrative law. Alongside the aim of facing the economic crisis, these measures aim to make administrative law more up-to-date and ensure it meets the needs of contemporary society.However, acceleration measures concerning decision-making and judicial proceedings may clash with the need to preserve the quality of these proceedings. On the one hand, swift procedures can be considered to be one aspect of high-quality decision making. On the other hand, other aspects of quality such as public participation and the thorough consideration of all relevant aspects and interests, may be at risk when the speed of decision-making is the only focus of reforms.Quality and Speed in Administrative Decision-Making: Tension or Balance? presents six national perspectives on these issues, together with a comparative overview comparing and contrasting national approaches with regards to finding a balance between the pace of proceedings and the quality of administrative and judicial decisions.The book will be of interest to academics of European and comparative administrative law, as well as policy-makers at the national and European level.

This volume analyses, for the first time in European studies, the impact that non-legally binding material (otherwise known as soft law) has on national courts and administration. The study is founded on empirical work undertaken by the European Network of Soft Law Research (SoLaR), across ten EU Member States, in competition policy, financial regulation, environmental protection and social policy. The book demonstrates that soft law is taken into consideration at the national level and it clarifies the extent to which soft law can have legal and practical effects for individuals and national authorities. The national case studies highlight the points of convergence or divergence in the way in which judges and administrators approach soft law, while reflecting on the reasons for and consequences of various national practices. A series of horizontal studies connect this research to the rich literature on new modes of governance, by revisiting traditional theories on soft law, and by reflecting on the potential of such instruments to undermine or to foster rule of law values.

This casebook studies the law governing judicial review of administrative action. It examines the foundations and the organisation of judicial review, the types of administrative action, and corresponding kinds of review and access to court. Significant attention is also devoted to the conduct of the court proceedings, the grounds for review, and the standard of review and the remedies available in judicial review cases. The relevant rules and case law of Germany, England and Wales, France and the Netherlands are analysed and compared. The similarities and differences between the legal systems are highlighted. The impact of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights is considered, as well as the influence of EU legislative initiatives and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, in the legal systems examined. Furthermore, the system of judicial review of administrative action before the European courts is studied and compared to that of the national legal systems. During the last decade, the growing influence of EU law on national procedural law has been increasingly recognised. However, the way in which national systems of judicial review address the requirements imposed by EU law differs substantially. The casebook compares the primary sources (legislation, case law etc) of the legal systems covered, and explores their differences and similarities: this examination reveals to what extent a ius commune of judicial review of administrative action is developing.

While the EU agencies that have been granted the power to adopt binding decisions are a diverse group, they at least share one feature: in all of them an organisationally separate administrative review body, i.e. a board of appeal, has been established. The review procedures before these boards must be exhausted before private parties can seize the EU courts and the boards therefore all fulfil a similar function: filtering cases before they end up before the courts and providing parties by expert-driven review. Sharing this common function as well as some common features, the boards of appeal of the different agencies remain heterogenous in their set up and functioning. This raises a host of questions from both a theoretic and practical perspective which this volume analyses in depth: how do the boards function, which kind of review do they offer, and how should they be conceptualized in the EU's overall system of legal protection against administrative action? To answer these questions, the volume's first part presents a series of case studies, covering all the EU boards of appeal currently in existence, while a second part looks into the horizontal issues raised by the phenomenon of the boards of appeal.

This book develops a timely analysis of the complex trends and transformations emerging in EU competition law in the current turbulent times. Repeated economic crises, the climate emergency, digitalisation, and geopolitical and democratic threats are all having profound societal and economic effects on the EU. In light of its fundamental role in the Treaties, EU competition law has been called upon to play an important role in responding to this state of 'turbulence'. This brings about significant governance and constitutional challenges, firstly by questioning how the governance of EU competition law is being transformed to respond and adapt. Secondly, these crisis-induced transformations probe the logic and constitutional limits of EU competition law within the framework of EU law. This collection brings together EU institutional and competition lawyers to reflect on the governance and constitutional challenges emerging from the post-modernisation evolution of EU competition law against the backdrop of the recent multiple crises in the EU. The essays focus on the substantive and procedural developments across the three main policy areas of EU competition law: antitrust, merger control and State aid. EU constitutional and competition lawyers will be interested in this important new collection.

This ambitious, innovative project examines the principle of effective judicial protection in EU law over two volumes. The principle of effective judicial protection is a cornerstone of the EU’s judicial system and is re-affirmed in Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Since the 1980s the Court of Justice has used the principle to shape EU and national procedural rules; more recently, the principle has acquired an even more central role in the EU constitutional structure. In the second volume an expert team explores how the national courts have applied Article 47 and the principle of effective judicial protection. It takes a comparative overview of the case law to assess the level of convergence (or divergence) of the national courts’ approaches. The questionnaire methodology allows for an accurate charting of national courts’ application of Article 47 at the domestic level. Given the wide application of Article 47, the collection will be of interest to EU constitutional scholars, comparative lawyers, as well as civil servants at both the national and EU level.