Meet the NOVA Platform for European Administrative and Regulatory Law

Based in Lisbon, at NOVA School of Law, NOVA PEARL is devoted to the study of Regulatory Administrative Law. It adopts a broad understanding of Regulatory Administrative Law. Broadly speaking, regulatory administrative law consists of organisational, procedural, and judicial review aspects of administrative intervention in markets to promote public interests. NOVA PEARL’s priority research area in the coming years is the administrative regulation of the digital sector.

NOVA PEARL’s activities aim to facilitate three distinct dialogues that are crucial to understand administrative regulation, namely:


NOVA PEARL is a bilingual Portuguese and European centre. It contributes to debates at national and European level, with the awareness that many challenges posed by regulatory administrative action in all Member States – not only Portugal – arise from the influence of Union legislation and case law.


Regulation raises issues that need to be contextualised within core doctrines of constitutional, European, and administrative law. However, it is only by cross-sectoral analysis that one may detect patterns of legal problems that appear across policy areas.


It is in the everyday work of regulators, regulated industries, courts, and civil society that the most complex legal problems of administrative regulation appear. Legal scholarship must contribute to analysing and solving them.

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