A cassation court traditionally has two tasks: a unifying task and a corrective task. The unifying task consists of verifying the internal legality of a lower court’s decision (the correct application and interpretation of the law by the lower courts). The corrective task refers to verifying the external legality of the lower court’s decision. The cassation court must ensure that the decisions of the courts concerned are in conformity with the requirements of proper administration of justice. This article focuses on the following question: is it necessary that the Belgian Council of State, acting in the capacity of a cassation court, performs both traditional tasks (corrective and unifying)? This is by no means self-evident, given the specific judicial structure in which the Belgian Council of State operates.

Given the rise of mediation in other legal disciplines and the influence of the EU, the call for mediation is increasing in Belgian administrative practice. Several years ago, the legislature took the first steps towards mediation in the judicial administrative procedure. This contribution is a study of the existing forms of mediation with its limitations and possibilities. Taking these findings into account, a possible mediation framework, applicable in the Belgian legal system, is proposed.

In judicial review of decisions of administrative authorities courts generally aim towards grounding a judgment on substantively true facts. Such a substantive truth is usually understood as meaning ’that which happened’. But how can true facts be established if the facts have not yet occurred and what implications does this have for judicial review in administrative procedures? In this article this question will be analysed by taking the Dutch Administrative Court’s review of merger decisions of the Dutch Competition Authority - using a substantively close copy of the European merger control assessment framework - as subject of analysis. Judicial review of the substantive assessment in merger control, including the prospective analysis involved and taking into account complexities of economic evidence, will be analyzed and set against the general aim of establishing substantive truth of facts.

This article examines the subsidy rules as they have developed since the introduction of the subsidy title into the General Administrative Law Act (GALA) fifteen years ago. What did experts at that time consider to be the most important parts of the subsidy title and what were their expectations in that regard? We will consider, for certain selected topics, which main developments have taken place in legal practice over the past fifteen years, based mainly on an analysis of the case law. The most important features and trends will be outlined in this article. Finally, we will consider whether these features and trends can teach us anything about (the development of) the GALA that may still be relevant for the legislator today, when designing general rules of administrative law.

Soft law is a necessity in modern public administration. On the verge of public bodies that execute administrative tasks various forms of soft law are applied. This article explores the many shapes of soft law in a continental European context. This results in the identification of a series of variables that are relevant for the legal effects of soft law. The article further focuses on the way policy rules, as a special form of soft law, are treated in the Dutch legislation.