Introduction

Abstract

The Introduction outlines the notion, the main features, the sources and the scope of the pan-European principles of good administration developed within the framework of the Council of Europe (CoE). It elaborates on their relationship to EU administrative law in describing the characteristics of EU administrative law and contrasts it with the characteristics of ‘CoE administrative law’. Moreover, the Introduction discusses the commonalities of the research on the pan-European general principles of good administration with the research on European human rights law and the quest for a ‘European rule of law’. It furthermore examines the general concepts of ‘good governance’ and ‘good administration’, the differences between them and the relevance of these notions for the research on pan-European principles of good administration. It finishes with a presentation of the effectiveness of pan-European principles of good administration as a main research question and the approach thereto taken in this book.