Composite administrative procedures are procedures in which administrative authorities from the Union and from Member States cooperate and each provide a relevant input into the final administrative decision taken at the Union or the national level.
these procedures are becoming more and more frequent as a mechanism for the implementation of Union policies and they reflect a multi-layered system of EU and national administrative cooperation that goes beyond the old paradigm of the indirect implementation of EU Law. Nevertheless, they remain a relatively unexplored topic in European Administrative Law. However positive they may be for building networks of mutual trust between the Union and national administrative actors, and however efficient for the adoption of technically complete and consensual decisions, they raise many legal concerns. After defining these procedures and placing them in context, this ook goes on to identify the legal shortcomings to which they give rise from the perspective of the individual and points towards potential solutions.
Composite procedures reflect very well the current state-of-play of European integration with regard to Administrative Law, but the European citizen should not suffer in his legal position owing to their complexity.