Participation in EU Rulemaking. A Rights-based Approach

The book is a critical legal analysis of the current scope of participation rights in EU law, embedded in the political and institutional contexts of European integration. Participation has featured prominently in recent institutional and political developments that have been shaping the EU's constitutional framework — most intensely in the follow up of the Commission's White Paper on Governance. Yet, little attention has been paid to participation rights as a means of ensuring the procedural protection of persons affected by EU regulation in its diverse forms. Both the EU legislator and the EU Courts have largely ignored this dimension of the rule of law. This book shows why the current judicial and legislative conceptions are inadequate to ensure the legal protection of rights and interests affected by EU regulation. It defends that current conceptions reflect an excessively formalistic approach to participation rights — premised on the right to be heard in individual procedures — as well as a restrictive view regarding the relationships between the citizens and the administration. The book combines a conceptual analysis with an empirical scrutiny of three EU policy fields — food, state aid and financial services — and assesses the scope of participation rights in EU law against their rationales and underlying legal values. It makes a case for the extension of participation rights to new situations and new types of procedures, in particular those that would generally fall within the category of rulemaking. It thereby brings distinct normative insights into a crucial theme of EU administrative law.