A.T. Marseille

Mediation in Administrative Proceedings: A Comparative Perspective

This chapter is concerned with all forms of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in administrative proceedings but focuses in specific on mediation in administrative law disputes between citizens and administrative authorities. It provides a comparative analysis for which the chapters on the national legal systems in this volume have served as a basis.

Accelerating Court Proceedings with the Dutch Crisis and Recovery Act

In 2008 in response to the global economic crisis the Dutch government enacted the Crisis and Recovery Act, aimed at accelerating various projects to strengthening the Dutch economy. This act contained measures to expedite appeals, introduced a ‘relativity’-principle and limited judicial review. Our evaluation, two years after coming into force of the act, shows that the measures have a negligible effect on accelerating projects and that several side-effects can be identified. We conclude that some measures should be reconsidered.

Transparency and Access to Government Information in the Netherlands

Some years ago, the Netherlands was regarded as a leading country in terms of transparency and access to government information. The Government Information (Public Access) Act (WOB, Wet openbaarheid van bestuur) came into force in 1980. Since then, many countries have introduced freedom-of-information legislation, and there are doubts as to whether practice and legislation in the Netherlands still meet present-day requirements with regard to transparency and access to information. The Netherlands has fallen behind in comparison with other countries that have recently introduced a Freedom of Information Act.

Law and Public Administration and the Quest for Reconciliation

Dragos Kovac and Marseille address the long-lasting dichotomy of law and public administration (management), trying to make the case for a reconciliation of the two fields. On one hand, the law is an important discipline within the wider public administration domain, and therefore legal aspects should be an inevitable part of administrative science discourse. On the other hand, the empirical approaches to law promoted by public management clearly benefit the legitimacy of regulation. The chapter explains the history and achievements of the Law and Administration Group at EGPA and emphasizes the continuous need for such a venue, where public lawyers and public managers meet and work together for an interdisciplinary approach to public administration issues. It is the Study Group’s ambition to continue its endeavor of bridging the dialogue between managers and lawyers on common interest themes.

From the Editors: The Story of a Data-Driven Comparative Legal Research Project on FOIA Implementation in Europe

Transparency and freedom of information is a topic that most think they know about, but in reality, it has multiple facets that cannot be gauged so easily. There are many publications giving account of the way access to public information is regulated, but not as many investigate, the way FOIA actually works in practice.

A Brief Comparative Outlook on the Regulation of Parties, Procedure, and Exceptions in Different FOIAs

The aim of this chapter is to look at legal systems in this book from the point of view of parties, procedure, and exceptions from free access to information, and summarize the main features from a comparative perspective. The comparative chapter on parties, procedure, and exceptions tries to bring together the main features of these three aspects of the Freedom of Information Laws and how they are dealt with in the jurisdictions covered by this book. Parties relate to who is requesting information and who is bound to provide the information, procedure relates to formalities of requesting information and answering to requests, and the part on exceptions is meant to show similarities and differences among different jurisdictions in terms of types of information that can be kept secret by governments.

Competence Remains Competence? Reopening Decisions that Violate Community Law

This paper discusses the question what should administrative bodies do in cases where they have adopted decisions that turn out to be contrary to Community law, but these decisions have become final because the parties concerned have not made use of the possibilities of judicial review available to them.