European governance: Meaning and value of a concept

This article tries to give the idea of governance a meaning for the context of European integration. It asserts that governance should rather be understood as a new perspective on old problems than as the observation of truly new institutional phenomena. In this perspective, governance is a version, a modification or a complement of a classic State government rather than its successor. In order to deal with the concept of governance, this article advances in three steps. It begins with some contextual observations, not all of which are directly linked to European integration but which are necessary to understand the meaning of "governance." This is useful to give a provisional definition of governance and to apply this definition to some relevant institutional examples of European governance. These examples will finally lead to the question of what the concept of governance may mean for a European legal method.