The Electronic Administrative Decision between : The Requirements of Effectiveness and the Guarantees of Legal Security

The electronic administrative decision represents a central manifestation of digital transformation in public administration, reshaping how decisions are prepared, adopted, and implemented. This evolution requires reconsidering the traditional pillars of administrative action — competence, cause, subject matter, and purpose — to ensure both administrative effectiveness and legal security in the digital environment. This article examines how a balance can be achieved between the requirements of digital effectiveness and the guarantees of legal security in the electronic administrative decision. Adopting a combined analytical and comparative methodology, the study draws on European legal frameworks — notably French administrative law (CRPA, KPMG decision 2006), German administrative procedure law (VwVfG), and key EU instruments including the GDPR, the eIDAS Regulation, Directive 2006/123/EC, and the EU eGovernment Action Plan 2016–2020 — as well as the Council of Europe Venice Commission Rule of Law Checklist, the OECD Digital Government Policy Framework, and selected Arab legal experiences from Egypt and Jordan. The study demonstrates that the legal pillars of the electronic administrative decision are identical in substance to those of the traditional decision, differing only in the means of expression. It further establishes that the principle of legal security — constitutionally enshrined in Algeria’s 2020 constitutional amendment — constitutes a fundamental safeguard, particularly in relation to the powers of annulment and withdrawal of electronic decisions. The findings confirm that digital transformation demands the re-engineering of legal guarantees and that comparative European and international experiences offer instructive models for strengthening national frameworks in this field.