The institution of good administration in the Council of Europe


                                          Dr. Váczi Péter

                                            SZE DF ÁJK

Key words

Good administration, Council of Europe


“The aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose
of safeguarding and realizing the ideals and principles which are their common heritage and
facilitating their economic and social progress.”[1] “Greater unity between its members” – the aim
of the Council of Europe may be furthered in a range of different ways. Article 1 of the Statute of
the Organization makes specific reference to the Council of Europe's mission in maintaining and
promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms as a way of achieving this “greater unity”.
Administrative procedure requires common European regulation by all means, as this is that special
field of law by which the administrative body directly meets the citizens. Consequently these cases
carry danger that fundamental rights of citizens may be impaired – its occurrence in a
constitutional state is undeniably not desirable by any means. Considering the present national
administrative systems, the administrative official procedural law is being emphasized. Main
tendencies in practice are to constrain the executive power of the state within constitutional
frame of law and to guarantee gradually expand the fundamental rights of citizens, establishing the
“good administration”. Regarding the European administrative law, does European administrative
procedural law exist at all? What forms and levels of standardization can be expected? The answer
can be given through the documents of the Council of Europe achieved in this field of law.


Before turning our attention to this process, we have to clarify the meaning of good
administration. The expression has become somewhat fashionable and appears in various instruments
both in European and in national level, but different authors give different definitions. According
to Theodor Fortsakis, “the principle of good administration is at once a long-standing idea and a
ground-breaking one. Its specific content has gradually been nurtured within the framework of the
long-established concept of user protection and this principle, enshrined and elaborated on in
various instruments and European case-law, now stands as one of the cornerstones of modern
administrative law.”[2] Good administration (some call as useful administration) means that
“administrative bodies have a duty to exercise the powers and responsibilities vested in them by
existing laws and regulations, by drawing on the prevailing concept of law, in such a way as to
avoid an overly rigid application of the statutory provisions. In other words, not only must they
avoid any unfair doctrinal approach but they must also endeavor to adapt the legal rules to social
and economical realities.”[3] The principle has an ambivalent function, “on the one hand, it acts
as an umbrella, under which separate rules are clustered together around a common, guiding idea,
namely the idea of good administration; […] on the other hand, it can itself serve as a springboard
for specific new rules relating to the same idea.”[4] The first interpretation is affirmed by Klara
Kanska, who says that “the notion ‘good administration’ developed as an umbrella principle,
comprising an open-ended source of rights and obligations”.[5]

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Contact-email: vaczip@freemail.hu
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[1] Statute of the Council of Europe, Chapter I, Article 1.

[2] Theodore Fortsakis: Principles governing good administration. European Public Law, Volume 11,
Issue 2. Kluwer Law International, 2005. p. 207.

[3] Fortsakis, p. 209.

[4] Fortsakis, p. 211.

[5] Klara Kanska: Towards Administrative Human Rights in the EU. Impact of the Charter of
Fundamental Rights. European Law Journal, Vol. 10. No. 3. Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004. p. 305.