The European Security and Defense AdministrationWithin the Context of the Global Legal Space

Abstract: This paper aims at reconstructing the largely unexplored administrative dimension of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), with particular reference to the growing web of functional, organizational and procedural interconnections between the EU, the Nato and the United Nations. Based on the results of the two main lines of research of administrative law beyond the State, namely European administrative law studies and the more recent «global administrative law» studies, the analysis of such interconnections suggests four main conclusions. First of all, the ESDP administration contributes to the exercise of a function resulting from the ever stricter integration of the functional disciplines of several international regimes and finding its anchorage in the global legal order. Secondly, in the exercise of such function, the ESDP administration acts as a component of a global organization, made up of a plurality of national and non national offices reciprocally interconnected by means of a variety of cooperation and integration mechanisms and jointly responsible for the carrying out of the world community security function. Thirdly, as for the discipline governing its functioning, the ESDP administration is subject to a body of European administrative law constituting a component of a wider global regulation aimed at making the joined action of the various competent offices possible. Fourthly, the reconstructed developments are characterized by deep functional and normative ambivalences.