Edoardo Chiti

Edoardo Chiti (1969) is Professor of Administrative Law at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Italy. His research focusses on the institutional and legal dynamics of European administrative integration, the new frontiers of regulation in the regional/transnational European horizon, the diversity of the overall paradigms of administrative law, all approached from a ‘law in context’ perspective. He is currently working on the theory and practice of regulatory experimentalism in the European Union, the regulatory features and ways of functioning of the European Green Deal, the changing legal construction of sustainability (ecological primacy, ecosystems’ health and conservation), the non-Western traditions of administrative law.

He studied law at the University of Florence and holds an LL.M. from the University College London (UCL) and a Ph.D. from the European University Institute (EUI). In the editorial board of a number of academic journals, Edoardo has coordinated and participated in several national and international research groups. His representative publications include ‘Managing the Ecological Transition of the EU: the European Green Deal as a Regulatory Process’, Common Market Law Review 19 (2022); ‘The Evolution of EU Administrative Law’, with J. Mendes, in P. Craig and G. de Búrca (Eds.), The Evolution of EU Administrative Law (OUP, III ed., 2021) 339; Il diritto di una comunità comunicativa. Un’indagine comparata sul diritto amministrativo della Chiesa (Giuffrè, 2019); ‘EU Administrative Law in an International Perspective’, in C. Harlow, P. Leino and G. della Cananea (Eds.), Research Handbook on EU Administrative Law (Elgar, 2016) 545; ‘The Constitutional Implications to the Financial and Public Debt Crisis’, with P.G. Teixeira, Common Market Law Review 683 (2013); Global Administrative Law and EU Administrative Law. Relationships, Legal Issues, and Comparison, ed. with B.G. Mattarella (Springer, 2011); L’amministrazione militare (Giuffrè, 2007); L’integrazione amministrativa europea, with C. Franchini (Il Mulino, 2003).

Contact: ec6038@nyu.edu

Research Project

Explaining, Conceptualizing and Assessing Administrative Power in the EU.  This project isolates one specific element of EU administration and law, namely ‘administrative power’, here meant as the whole of implementing techniques enabling public agencies to enforce their own will through coercion. Such techniques are only one option among several potentially available to EU rule-makers, as illustrated by the proliferation since the early 1990s of governance instruments seeking to gradually accommodate behaviours of regulatees with existing EU law and policy targets. And yet, administrative power has been a key element of EU administration and law since the very inception of the EU: the implementing arrangements at work in fields such as State aids and competition - as well as, more recently, digitalization, artificial intelligence and military security - exemplify the relevance of coercion and authority as a distinct mode of policy delivery in the EU. The overall objective is to provide a historically based, conceptually sound and critical understanding of administrative power as a defining element of EU administration and law. More precisely, the research addresses the following three main issues. Firstly, it aims at reconstructing through a comparative legal history analysis the reasons explaining the historical emergence and consolidation of administrative power in the EU polity. Secondly, it discusses the way in which EU administrative power should be conceptualized, with a view to shed light on the normative and dynamic dimensions of EU administrative power, as well as the ambiguities and limitations of its legitimacy foundations. Thirdly, it considers the role that administrative power may play in the current phase of the European integration process, characterized by the coexistence of a number of macro-strategies launched by the EU political institutions, including the Green Deal, the Competitiveness Compass and the Europe’s Defence Readiness, each problematic in itself and potentially conflicting with one another.