Le rôle du service public dans le droit administratif français

Public service, a basic concept of administrative law and the cornerstone of public law theory in France, plays an important role in French administrative law. Meanwhile, public service is a developing concept and theory in France. Compared to traditional theory, private law subject providing public service is an innovation of public service theory in France. Based on large amount of legal precedents, Conseil d'Etat established and improved the legal system, in which private law subject provides public service.

This thesis starts from analyzing the development of the definition of public service and then further discuss the development of private law subject providing the function of public service and the ways it provides public service. At last, the thesis analyzes the establishment, revocation and legally applied situations of private law subject providing public service and the legal liability it bears. The thesis has five chapters:

The first chapter discusses the definition of public service and discriminates some related concepts from the origination of the definition and development of public service, based on which analyzes the situations of how to define public service and the classification of public service. The classification focuses on service public administratif and service public industriel et commercial.

The second chapter gives an account of the development of private law subject providing the function of public service. Private law subject as public service provider experiences a development process: first, the conditions for private law subject as public service provider extend; second, the range of public service provided by private law subject extends from service public industriel et commercial to a part of service public administratif.

The third chapter focuses on the ways private law subject provides public service. Private law subject can provide public service based both on unilateral act of authorization of legal person of public law and public service license agreement signed with legal person of public law. Later, the thesis analyzes the contents, processes and legal systems of ways of providing different public service.

The fourth chapter studies the related systems and regulations on the establishment and revocation of public service in France and the common legal principle of public service — Rolland Laws. Then, the thesis discusses the specific legally applied situations of service public administratif and service public industriel et commercial. The application of competition law and consumer law in public service is specially mentioned.

The fifth chapter first analyzes the type of administrative legal liability in public service (recours pour exces de pouvoir and recours pour reparation) and the process and range of application of the two proceedings respectively. At last, the thesis discusses the legal liability system when private law subject providing public service: take being able to be applied to civil liability as principle, yet there are a number of situations which apply to administrative legal liability.

Starting from the development of the definition of public service, the thesis carries out research on the significant innovation of private law subject providing public service in administrative law in France. The thesis refers to a massive amount of material in French and quotes many legal precedents from Conseil d'Etat

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