Quality and Speed in Administrative Decision-making: Tension or Balance?

In various European countries such as France, Italy, and the Netherlands, lawmakers have adopted legislation in order to deal with the consequences of the economic crisis. These laws contain provisions aimed at speeding up administrative decision making and judicial proceedings which have an impact on various provisions of general administrative law. Alongside the aim of facing the economic crisis, these measures aim to make administrative law more up-to-date and ensure it meets the needs of contemporary society.However, acceleration measures concerning decision-making and judicial proceedings may clash with the need to preserve the quality of these proceedings. On the one hand, swift procedures can be considered to be one aspect of high-quality decision making. On the other hand, other aspects of quality such as public participation and the thorough consideration of all relevant aspects and interests, may be at risk when the speed of decision-making is the only focus of reforms.Quality and Speed in Administrative Decision-Making: Tension or Balance? presents six national perspectives on these issues, together with a comparative overview comparing and contrasting national approaches with regards to finding a balance between the pace of proceedings and the quality of administrative and judicial decisions.The book will be of interest to academics of European and comparative administrative law, as well as policy-makers at the national and European level.

Charles O'Mahony joined the School of Law in September 2012 as a lecturer in Public Law. He completed a PhD at the Centre for Disability Law and Policy, NUI Galway in 2013 entitled "Diversion: A Comparative Study of Law and Policy Relating to Defendants and Offenders with Mental Health Problems and Intellectual Disability". Charles previously worked as Amnesty International Ireland's Legal Officer on its mental health campaign. He also worked as a legal researcher for the Law Reform Commission of Ireland for a number working on different law reform projects. He previously worked at NUI Galway as a part-time lecturer teaching a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses to law and non-law students and as an assistant lecturer in law at Dublin Institute of Technology and a senior tutor in law at the School of Law, University College Dublin. He was awarded a LL.M from University College London in 2005 and a LL.M in Public Law from NUI Galway in 2006. He completed a BA in Legal Science and History in 2003 and a LL.B in 2004 at NUI Galway.Mariolina Eliantonio is an Assistant Professor in European Administrative Law at Maastricht University. After having studied law at Teramo University (Italy), she obtained a LLM (cum laude) in European and comparative law at Maastricht University (the Netherlands). At the same University, she has written a PhD on the Europeanisation process of administrative justice in Italy, Germany and England and since 2008 she is employed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Law of Maastricht University. She teaches courses of European institutional law, comparative and European administrative and constitutional law, and several legal writing and legal research courses. Her research interests lie in the enforcement of European law before national and European courts and in the role of courts in the EU legal system. She has extensively written on several aspects of access to court at national and European level (specifically in the environmental field), as well as on the Europeanisation process of national administrative law. She has been also a legal advisor at Milieu Ltd, a multi-disciplinary Brussels-based consultancy which carried out various types of research for the European institutions in the field of justice, fundamental rights, and environment.