Towards a European Administrative Procedure Act

Under the joint responsibility of the Member States to implement EU law, administrative law systems of the EU are converging and a common body of EU administrative law is emerging. Most debates on this process of EU administrative law integration have focused on differences and divergences between national systems vis-à-vis the EU system. The concept of administration at the level of the EU, however, is difficult to compare to that in use in most domestic systems in continental Europe. In this contribution we bring the lens of the United States (U.S.) approach to the debate. The problems and challenges the EU administration faces do resemble those which confronted the federal administration in the U.S. more than 50 years ago. The article discusses some of the parallels between the U.S. and EU system and zooms in on the EU’s ‘problem zones’: preparation of regulation – in particular the role of participation and the use of evidence therein – and the position of agencies. On the basis of experiences with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in controlling the U.S. administration and the federal agencies, the contribution then reflects on the desirability of a general EU administrative law act, especially in view of the upcoming extension of judicial review of general rules the Lisbon Treaty will most likely bring. The conclusion is in short that the American APA offers food for European thought and that a lot could be gained with a European styled APA ‘light version’