Joana Mendes is Professor of Comparative Administrative Law since 2016 at the University of Luxembourg. She graduated in law and obtained a master’s degree in public law (2002) at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). She has a doctor degree from the European University Institute (Italy), awarded in 2009. Before joining the University of Luxembourg, she worked at the University of Amsterdam (2009-2016), where she was Associate Professor at the Department of International and EU Law and PhD Dean. She was awarded an individual research grant (VENI) by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), between 2013 and 2016 on a project on “Unveiling EU Administrative Discretion: The Role of Law and Good Administration”.
Abstract
EU agencies that combine instrumental and final decision-making powers can acquire constitutive powers, even if subject to detailed substantive strictures. By discussing some of the competences of the Single Resolution Board, Professor Mendes will revisit the prevailing approach to discretion and to the role of legal norms in their regard to argue that the persisting formalism that conceptual distinctions may engender may distort our views on the nature of the powers of the agencies and on the possibilities of controlling them judicially. Drawing on her previous work on discretion, she will argue that characterising the power of the EU agencies by reference to the degree of precision of the enabling norms is of little normative value to understand their functional role.