Just the TTIP of the Iceberg? Dynamics and Effects of Information Leaks in EU Politics

Abstract

“[M]any observers agree that the Commission has been ‘leaking like a sieve’”.Leaks have become a major element of European Union politics. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) leak in early May 2016 is neither the first of its kind nor will it be the last. Transparency by leaks – or “transleakancy” as the series of publications of confidential TTIP negotiation documents has already been coined – is one element of the political game that different interest groups, governmental and non–governmental, play on both sides of the Atlantic. And yet, leaked EU documents have been shared in wider policy-networks all along, independent of whether they have received media attention or not. The difference is that leaks similar to those that we see on TTIP have reached a new level of importance. Here, themere fact of their existence makes them newsworthy. The impact of these leaks on public debates is seen as amajor risk for negotiators.

Bureaucratic Politics and the Prevention of Leaks in the European Commission

“…The findings of this case study contribute to a comparative understanding of leaking in different political systems. The insights gained will also add to the literature on the administrative and political dynamics inside the Commission as the core executive of the European Union (Hartlapp et al 2013;Kassim et al 2013;Wille 2013 Goetz andPatz 2016;Hustedt and Seyfried 2016). Demonstrating that Pozen's observations can be transferred to the EU, the article gives rise to the argument that, in more open political and administrative systems, rules on secrecy and confidentiality are not necessarily meant to be fully effective beyond (inter)national security concerns and beyond areas of central political interest to those in power.…”

“…Researchers have studied leaking of this more common type in various Western political systems, including in the USA (Prémon 2010(Prémon , 2012Pozen 2013;Alaimo 2016), the Netherlands (Bovens, Geveke and de Vries 1995;de Jong and de Vries 2007), Israel (Reich 2008), Australia (Flynn 2006(Flynn , 2011, Germany (Spörer-Wagner and Marcinkowski 2010), and the European Union (Patz 2014(Patz , 2016Herrmann 2015). Disciplinary perspectives on leaking range from law (Pozen 2013) and journalism studies (Reich 2008;Reich andBarnov 2016, Flynn 2006) to political science and public administration (Bovens, Geveke and de Vries 1995;de Jong and de Vries 2007;Spörer-Wagner and Marcinkowski 2010;Prémon 2012;Patz 2014), although many contributions on political leaking go across disciplinary boundaries.…”

“…Preserving confidentiality thus seems much more about playing "time games" (Howlett and Goetz 2014: 478) than about the fact that early information leaks have a direct policy influence. Variation in timing of leaks can therefore reveal something about the political and administrative system in which the leak happened or indicate the political dynamics behind particular decision-making processes (Patz 2016). This is why leaks are a valuable source for researching bureaucratic politics and public policy-making (cf.…”

“…College decision making, a key finding from previous EU studies is that leaking from the Commission seems most likely after the start of the so-called 'interservice consultation' (Patz 2016 For the purpose of this paper, I present insights from those respondents of the pre-test and main survey who reported that they had indeed received at least one leaked version of the Commission's draft before the legislative proposal was officially published in July 2011. In total, 40 individual replies provide direct information on the dynamics of the leak: 3 out of 10…”

Bureaucratic politics and the prevention of leaks in the European Commission

“…Researchers have studied leaking of this more common type in various Western political systems, including in the USA (Prémon 2010(Prémon , 2012Pozen 2013;Alaimo 2016), the Netherlands (Bovens, Geveke and de Vries 1995;de Jong and de Vries 2007), Israel (Reich 2008), Australia (Flynn 2006(Flynn , 2011, Germany (Spörer-Wagner and Marcinkowski 2010), and the European Union (Patz 2014(Patz , 2016Herrmann 2015). Disciplinary perspectives on leaking range from law (Pozen 2013) and journalism studies (Reich 2008;Reich andBarnov 2016, Flynn 2006) to political science and public administration (Bovens, The key question for this paper is why the prevention of regular leaks by public administrations seems so unsuccessful.…”