Good Governance on the European Union Level
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The European Ombudsman has stressed his role in ensuring ‘good administrative practices’, while reiterating the importance of avoiding negative consequences of juridification by using a considerably open definition of maladministration. ‘The open character of the term is justly one of the elements which distinguish the role of ombudsman from that of the court.’66 The crux lies in the right balance between the citizen’s legitimate rights and the public interest in the form of the administration’s need for efficient procedures. A too strong emphasis on individual rights might lead to undue juridification of administrative procedures. Since specialized administrative economic law constitutes a large part of the Union’s administrative law, it might even provoke the development of a strong litigation culture,67 although the danger should not be overestimated. Many individual rights are already part of the acquis communautaire and at least some codes of good administrative behaviour are already adopted by the European institutions as well as published in their official journal. These improvements might yield proper procedures, high quality decisions, and stimulate the level of rational reflection. When such a law on good governance is made subsidiary to the standing legal framework, it would not impede more detailed horizontal or vertical legislation. The right to good administration and its legal basis in the Treaty of the European Union seems to have the potential to mature the particular blend of administrative law traditions characteristic of the European Union. Future designers of a law on good administration thus need to know of the different traditions of the member states in order to make it fit the multilevel character of administrative law. Subsequently, they need to continue complementing the original administration-centred tradition with an appropriate blend of the individual-centred, legislator-centred and ombudsman- centred tradition, in order to properly balance the rights of the individual and the European public interest.
4. Good Governance on the European Union Level In Chapter 2, the Commission’s White Paper on European Governances has been extensively addressed.68 However, this White Paper was not the start of the discussion on good governance in the European Union because sundry publications and decisions on good governance had already been published several years before.69 In 1991, the EU Council of Ministers provided a brief description of the contents and the importance of good governance in a resolution on Human Rights, Democracy and Development:70 The Council stresses the importance of good governance. While sovereign states have the freedom to institute their own administrative structures and establish their own constitutional arrangements, equitable development can only effectively and sustainably be achieved if a number of general principles of government are adhered to: sensible economic and social policies, democratic decision- making, adequate governmental transparency and financial accountability,
Annual Report of the European Ombudsman for 1995, Luxembourg, 17. For a discussion of the litigation problem see eg Kańska 2004, 320–1. 68 European Commission, White Paper on European Governance, July 2001, COM (2001) 428. 69 Chiti 1995, 241–58; Schwarze 1995, 227–39. 70 Resolution of the European Council of Ministers on 28 November 1991, in: Van Banning and Genugten 1999, 97 and 196–8. 66 67
