The European Picture: Ten Challenges Facing EU Public Law in the Coming Decade

This chapter’s objective is to reflect on existing and impending challenges to European Union (EU) public law from both a constitutional and an administrative angle. The background to such an overview is that the EU law has radically changed in the past decades. Next to several Treaty amendments enlarging the scope of EU policies, the EU has grown substantially in size. European administrative law has evolved over time and has become an important factor shaping the reality of policy implementation in the EU. At the same time, EU public law remains complex due to the EU’s ‘variable geometry,’ according to which in some policy areas, such as for example the monetary Union, not all EU Member States participate, whilst in others, such as for example the common visa and travel area, non-EU Member States are involved. In this chapter I argue that the evolving nature of European integration through law has both a constitutional law and administrative law context. Challenges for the future development of quantity as well as quality of policies in the area of integration arise from both aspects. I will try to outline ten of the, in my view, most pressing challenges.