EU Confidential: The European Parliament's Involvement in EU Security and Defence Policy

Abstract

In 2002, the European Parliament (EP) and the Council concluded an Interinstitutional Agreement that gave the EP privileged access to sensitive documents in the area of security and defence. It is argued that the Council let the EP become involved in this sensitive policy area because it accepted the legislature's argument for its right to access. In addition, the EP's bargaining strategy concretized the procedures and contributed to finalizing the deal after two years of negotiation. It is shown in this article that despite the EP's marginal powers in the area of security and defence and the traditional conception of this policy as an executive prerogative, it cannot be isolated from democratic principles. This article provides new evidence for previous claims that the EP's involvement in EU foreign policy is increasing due to legitimacy concerns. It also offers a theoretical account for why this is so.

Transparency as a Platform for Institutional Politics: The Case of the Council of the European Union

“…Inter-institutional manoeuvring of the Parliament is also described in terms of its pursuit of extended powers (Buitenweg, 2016;Rosén & Stie, 2017, this issue). The Parliament's legislative positioning on transparency might then be viewed as a means of expanding access to Council information, a search for negotiating collateral regarding (wider) parliamentary oversight arrangements, or a way of exercising public pressure on the FAC (Crisp, 2014;Rosén, 2015), turning transparency into respectively an instrument of inter-institutional policy, a bargaining chip, or a lever. Not only the Parliament seeks to influence the FAC's transparency policy; the Commission and the EEAS may in their turn be concerned that information (non-)disclosure by the FAC undermines their exercise of executive functions (Reichard, 2013, p. 328).…”

“…This is the case even when much evidence suggests that in practice transparency and inter-institutional information are connected in various ways (e.g. Bjurulf & Elgström, 2004;Reichard, 2013;Rosén, 2015). The fact that the Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) represents something of an outlier in the Council in terms of the stunted advance of transparency is partially explained by the traditional norm of limited transparency in the area of foreign policy (Curtin, 2013, p. 453;Hillebrandt, 2017;Puetter, 2014).…”

“…Abazi, 2016;Brandsma, 2013;Maurer, Kietz, & Völkel, 2005;Rosén, 2015). Some of this academic work makes reference to the transparency rules, yet it only does so in passing, maintaining the focus primarily on information required for parliamentary oversight.…”

Not Worth the Net Worth? The Democratic Dilemmas of Privileged Access to Information

“…2 Neither article is explicit about the scope or depth of the EP's right to information. Therefore, the EP has made an effort to impose its own interpretation of the Parliament's right to information, mostly against considerable opposition from member states, but often with at least some success (Rosén, 2015(Rosén, , 2017. In this article, we assess two key agreements that have given the EP access to documents in external relations, and ask: to what extent do these contribute to the democratic accountability of EU foreign policy?…”

Bureaucratic Politics and the Prevention of Leaks in the European Commission

“…Where we find confidentiality enforced in Western political systems, this should be selective and limited to instances where the strategic interests of political leadership are concerned. This enriches discussions on the politics and regulation of secrecy, confidentiality, and lack of transparency in the EU (Curtin 2014;Galloway 2014;Abazi 2015;Rosén 2015;Hillebrandt and Novak 2016) and the emerging debate on secrecy in Europe.…”