The Role of the European Parliament and the US Congress in Shaping Transatlantic Relations: TTIP, NSA Surveillance, and CIA Renditions

Abstract

This article analyses the manner in which the parliaments of the EU and the US -two key global strategic partners -participate in the shaping of transatlantic relations. The article argues that the European Parliament (EP) and Congress aim not only to influence their executive branches but also to act autonomously in the transnational arena through parliamentary diplomacy. They seek to secure concessions both formally by scrutinizing transatlantic international agreements, such as TTIP, as well as informally by exposing injustices and diplomatic misconduct through human rights advocacy and institutional pressure, such as in the cases of the NSA surveillance and CIA renditions. The article demonstrates that the EP and Congress have created capacities for internal scrutiny and transnational interparliamentary dialogue and that they utilize their consent powers to make claims, condition transatlantic negotiations and gain greater presence, visibility and influence in international affairs.

Of Principal(s') Interest? A Disaggregated, Multiple Principals' Approach to Commission Discretion

“…In the past, it has focused on data protection (Ripoll Servent, ), intellectual property rights (Dür and Mateo, ) but also tried to influence the negotiations on vehicles with South Korea (Elsig and Dupont, , p. 498). In the case of TTIP, it has bundled its resources and set up a ‘special monitoring group’ (Jančić, , p. 900), which suggests a more widespread role. Finally, citizens have no direct bureaucracy to draw on in their pursuit of controlling agent decisions.…”

From Access to Documents to Consumption of Information: The European Commission Transparency Policy for the TTIP Negotiations

“…4 More specific literature on EU trade policy assesses transparency from the perspective of the demandside, either based on Access to Documents legislationpublic transparency-or by analysing Inter-Institutional Agreements-institutional transparency. These studies tend to place the Commission on the defensive and at the losing end of the spectrum, reluctantly forced to provide more transparency by an increasingly assertive public opinion and powerful Parliament (Devuyst, 2013;Hillebrandt & Abazi, 2015;Jančić, 2016;Kleimann, 2011;Meissner, 2016;Rosén & Stie, 2017, this issue). …”

“…The Commission has also explicitly stated that these practices will become the new rationale for future trade negotiations (European Commission, 2015b). Literature on EU trade policy assesses transparency from the perspective of the demandside, either based on Access to Documents legislationpublic transparency-or by analysing Inter-Institutional Agreements-institutional transparency (Devuyst, 2013;Hillebrandt & Abazi, 2015;Jančić, 2016;Kleimann, 2011;Meissner, 2016; see also Gheyle & De Ville, 2017;Rosén & Stie, 2017, in this issue). So far there has not been any comprehensive effort to map and analyse changes in transparency policy from the perspective of the supply-sidei.e.…”

Balancing National Security and Data Protection: The Role of EU and US Policy‐Makers and Courts before and after the NSA Affair

“…Second, it is generally argued that despite ‘battles over privacy’ (Farrell and Newman, ), close EU–US co‐operation on intelligence sharing and counter‐terrorism was established in the aftermath of 9/11 (Jančić, ; Pleschinger, ; Suda, ; Tzanou, ), which had the effect of sidelining EU privacy advocates. However, Snowden's revelations about the US spying on matters not necessarily related to terrorism have reversed, according to this view, the balance between national security and privacy in Europe and ‘Europe's political pendulum swung back in favour of privacy advocates’ (Farrell and Newman, ).…”