Abstract

Standing is one of the most important conditions for accepting an annulment action, as it represents the legal or factual link between the appellant and the challenged administrative decision. In principle, a claim is inadmissible if it is abstract, theoretical, or filed by someone unaffected by the decision. However, the standing requirement in an annulment action differs from that in personal lawsuits. An annulment action is a substantive action aimed at protecting administrative legality and purging the legal system of unlawful decisions. Therefore, the standing requirement in an annulment action has undergone significant development, ranging from a broad judicial trend that opens the door to appeals to protect the law, to a more restrictive trend aimed at preventing malicious, populist, or frivolous lawsuits. This research discusses the evolution of the standing requirement in an annulment action through a comparative analytical study. It highlights the legal basis of standing, its nature, types, and criteria for assessing it, as well as the impact of judicial interpretation on its expansion or restriction. The research also examines the relationship between the standing requirement and the substantive nature of the annulment action, the right to litigation, the principle of legality, and considerations of administrative stability. The study concludes that the administrative judiciary is required to achieve a delicate balance: it should not narrow the scope of the interest in a way that protects the illegal decisions of the administration, nor should it broaden it to the point of turning the annulment lawsuit into an open popular lawsuit without any control.