Comparative Law and Administrative Citizenship in the Balkan Area

The essay investigates the relations between European administrative law models and administrative citizenship in the Balkan area. Administrative law in the Balkan area can be better understood when analysing the social transformation of recent years that swept through the region.

For these countries, the European Union represents a «reference model» for the development of the political institutions. In comparative law, it is referred to as «a strong model», a model which introduces clauses and conditions, so incisive to modify the traditional circulation of the legal models. In this case, the European Union binds candidate members to comply with some institutional obligations before concluding negotiations for enlargement. Clearly then structural reforms of public administration, administrative action and proceeding, and administrative justice represent a necessary condition for admission.

The doctrine’s contribution to the analysis of the Balkan legal systems still have not defined a whole outline, but rather independent fragments, as it happens typically for the examination of the foreign law.

The paper examines the administrative experience of countries of the Balkan region like Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Republic of Romania and Slovenia, which, in a short period of time, moved from political systems based on absolute Communist party power to other systems committed to democratic principles and procedures.

Five case studies serve to analyse the legal prevision about administrative citizen’s rights introduced in the laws on administrative procedure or in other legal formants to define the concept and one model of administrative citizenship in Balkans area. The coding of rules on administrative action proved limited in the Balkan area. Moreover, the original adhesion to other models centred on the protection of subjective rights promoted the legality of administrative acts, while the institutes of participation to the administrative procedures were limited, but, with the fall of the classic model of socialism, beside the evolution of the Austrian model, some legal aspects of the Anglo-American model emerged, through hybridisation.

In constructing administrative citizenship in the Balkan area this point is worthy noting.