Quality and Speed in Administrative Decision-making: Tension or Balance?: (155 Ius Commune: European and Comparative Law Series)

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.

About the Author :
Chris Backes is Professor of Environmental and Planning Law at the Utrecht Centre for Water, Oceans and Sustainability Law, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Notably, he has acted as President of the Dutch Society for Environmental Law, a member of the Netherlands Council for Nature Protection (Natuurbeschermingsraad) and a member of the Netherlands Council of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM-Raad). He specialises in sustainability law as well as environmental and planning law with a special focus on law for circular economy and biodiversity law. Mariolina Eliantonio is an Assistant Professor in European Administrative Law at Maastricht University. After having studied law at Teramo University (Italy), she obtained a LLM (cum laude) in European and comparative law at Maastricht University (the Netherlands). At the same University, she has written a PhD on the Europeanisation process of administrative justice in Italy, Germany and England and since 2008 she is employed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Law of Maastricht University. She teaches courses of European institutional law, comparative and European administrative and constitutional law, and several legal writing and legal research courses. Her research interests lie in the enforcement of European law before national and European courts and in the role of courts in the EU legal system. She has extensively written on several aspects of access to court at national and European level (specifically in the environmental field), as well as on the Europeanisation process of national administrative law. She has been also a legal advisor at Milieu Ltd, a multi-disciplinary Brussels-based consultancy which carried out various types of research for the European institutions in the field of justice, fundamental rights, and environment.