This article on the usefulness of a general codification of administrative law forms the closing contribution of a NALL-special. In this special, various authors have reflected on the successfulness of a broad codification process in 1998, which introduced rules on the notification of decisions, policy rules, subsidies, enforcement and supervision of administrative authorities in the Dutch General Administrative Law Act (GALA). The editors asked the contributors whether the objectives of the rules introduced were met and how the rules turned out to function in practice. In this overarching article, the NALL-editors reflect on the general lessons to be learned for the GALA-legislator. In these lessons they also take into consideration the initiatives for a law of administrative procedure of the European Union.

The codification of policy rules is based on the assumption that public authorities will adopt their policy in policy rules and that judges will use these policy rules when assessing individual decisions. However, codification might have side effects, like the existence of rules that do not meet the criteria of policy rules. This article examines the extent to which the objectives of the legislator have been achieved. It is concluded that public bodies indeed adopt policy rules more and more, but that these rules do not always meet the standards. Administrative courts appear to use rules when assessing decisions, but do not seem to follow the scheme as laid down in the GALA. The codification resulted in a complexity of rules, but this complexity does not hamper judicial review. After all: the judicial review is centered on the individual decision, not so much on the nature of the applied rule.