Foundings
This chapter examines the founding of European integration. Following two world wars, Western Europe sought to reconcile the increased functional demand for delegated regulatory power with their historical experiences and constitutional traditions. Each country’s solution followed the same basic pattern: the vast majority of rules of general application would no longer be in the form of traditional legislation passed by parliament but would take the form of regulations or other subordinate legislation produced within the executive and administrative spheres, adopted pursuant to ‘enabling legislation’ or ‘framework laws’. However, at almost the same historical moment, administrative governance also began to take on an additional supranational dimension. This new dimension involved the shift of regulatory power, both in terms of rulemaking and enforcement/adjudication, to institutions operating outside the confines of the nation-state.