THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN EU ADMINISTRATIVE LAW AND INTERNATIONAL LAW: RATIONALES, ARCHITECTURE AND EFFECTS

This article aims at making sense of the interplay between EU administrative law, on the one hand, and international and global norms, on the other. It argues that the EU has developed an overall framework of such interplay and discusses its distinguishing features. That framework has been defined in the favorable context of a globalized legal space oriented to multilateralism and international regulatory cooperation. But it has not promoted a full opening of EU administrative law. Nor has it insulated EU administrative law from all possible influence of international law, as sometimes claimed. The EU has developed a variety of regulatory rationales and a complex set of legal doctrines which have rather operated as a variable aperture lens, allowing relative closure or relative openness of EU administrative law, depending on the case. Unsurprisingly, international and global norms have thus enriched and complicated EU administrative law, without however modifying its fundamental contents.