Handbuch des Verwaltungsrechts. Группа авторов

Handbuch des Verwaltungsrechts

thus also an extensive restructuring of the executive, this new political style tried to create an investment-friendly legal environment, often by means of measures intended to “accelerate” administrative (court) procedures (par. 14 et seq.), reduce bureaucracy (par. 19), privatise public services (par. 20 et seq.), implement New Public Management (par. 22), and reform social administration (par. 25 et seqq.). At the turn of the millennium, the digital revolution became an additional factor for change, but it has tended to reinforce the trends already established in the 1990s (par. 31 et seqq.). 4. Similar changes would presumably have occurred without the Federal Republic of Germany’s membership in the European Union, but the obligation to implement Union law has given them a special form (Art. 4 [3] TEU). It seems that neither German politics nor German scholarship has fully processed this fact yet (par. 36 et seqq.). By contrast, even if the application of EU law by national authorities and courts poses specific challenges, there is no need to generally revise German administrative legal thinking: The effects of EU law on German administrative law should neither be under- nor overestimated (par. 45 et seqq.). 5. It remains to be seen what administrative consequences the “Coronavirus crisis”, which broke out in mid-March 2020, will have for Germany and Europe in the medium and long term: they will initially depend on the extent and nature of the economic and social consequences of this crisis at the national and European level. They will also depend on the extent to which the unresolved social, economic, and political problems in Germany and Europe, which have accumulated over the past thirty years, will further increase the economic and social consequences of the “Coronavirus crisis”. Ultimately, it must become clear whether the current German administration and administrative law are only equipped to handle fair-weather conditions or whether they can be part not only of the problem but also of the solution (and succeed in communicating this, par. 50). Zweiter Teil Rechtsebenen und Rechtsquellen

Ralf P. Schenke