Good governance through the prism of the European Court of Human Rights

The principle of good administration has many intellectual homes yet seldom is it analyzed outside the European Union context. Such lack of academic attention does not seem warranted because since the Beyeler case of 2000 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has named an increasing number of requirements that national administrations have to respect. In Moskal case of 2009, the ECtHR has explicitly labeled the whole of these requirements as a ‘principle of good governance’. This article seeks to uncover the (normative) origins, scope, and implications of ‘good governance’ notion as well as its possible pitfalls in this lesser researched field. By analyzing the rich trove of case-law adopted in this regard, it will deconstruct how the ECtHR conceptualizes this notion and take stock of what concrete obligations do national administrative authorities have to fulfill if they want to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights.