In collaboration with the Council of State of the Netherlands, ACA-Europe held on 29 November 2013 a seminar in The Hague on “Developing administrative law in Europe: Natural convergence or imposed uniformity?”. This seminar, organized with the support of the European Commission, brought together participants from the member Courts of the ACA-Europe and from ReNEUAL, a network of university professors focusing on research in European administrative law.

 

The seminar was chaired by Mr P.H. Donner, Vice-President of the Council of State of the Netherlands, who gave an opening speech.
 

The debates were opened by Mr Rob Widdershoven, solicitor-general of administrative law at the Council of State of the Netherlands and professor at Utrecht University, who gave an introduction and focused on the aim of the seminar.

The first round table was introduced by Mr Paul Craig, professor at Oxford University, and discussed the principles of good governance common to administrative law in Europe. Mr Craig referred to the European Parliament's Resolution adopted on 15 January 2013 with recommendations to the Commission to develop a draft Law of Administrative Procedure of the European Union and introduced ReNEUAL’s work in progress to develop “Model Rules on EU Administrative Procedures”.

The second round table about common principles to national judicial protection and procedures was introduced by Mr Jean Bernard Auby, professor at Science Po Paris.
 

Mr Christiaan Timmermans, former Judge with the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg, presented the general conclusions of the seminar.
 

IMG 3582Mr Ingo Weustenfeld, policy officer at the DG Justice, referred to a new initiative of the European Commission. The EC has launched an open debate on the future justice policy of the European Union. One of the five discussion papers preparing the debate is dedicated to 'EU administrative law and national administrations'. Everyone with an interest was invited to share their contribution to it until the end of 2013.