This lecture has two objectives: present a law in the process of construction, European administrative law; and identify the underlying legal science. The term ‘European administrative law’ can be used to refer to a host of legal phenomena as well as the educational discipline that studies them.
The crux of the matter is to ascertain what new type of law is being developed (texts, procedures, bodies) and what discourse, ideas and representations are used by legal experts to resolve the difficulties at the heart of European administrative governance, in other words and unlike the US federal system, the construction of a union without its very own administration that can act on the territory of the Member States. Can it be that the issues in implementing European Union law are at the centre of the fundamental problems of European integration?