This monograph offers a uniquely comprehensive and in-depth legal account of official secrets in the European Union. It critically analyses their implications for oversight and fundamental rights. Based on forty interviews with practitioners and other stakeholders, it offers an understanding of the practices of official secrets and provides a critical and much-needed perspective on how parliamentary, judicial and administrative oversight institutions deal with access to classified material and the dilemma of oversight to concurrently ensure secrecy necessary for EU security policies and openness needed for democratic processes and fundamental rights.
The book discerns shifts in institutional practice of oversight at the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the European Union that disproportionately favour secrecy and the protection of classified documents while creating serious limitations to open democratic deliberations and access to justice, and delivers new insights on the EU's development as a security actor as well as its autonomy from Member States, showing how rules on official secrets were a means for the EU to gain more autonomy in external security cooperation.
- Detailed account of the development of rules on official secrets facilitates understanding of the regulatory framework of official secrets
- Empirical data from original interview material with key stakeholders provides useful original insights on the practice for practitioners and academics
- In-depth analysis of parliamentary, judicial and administrative oversight aids understanding and identifying oversight deficits and oversight 'overloads'
- Comprehensive evaluation of access to official secrets (by citizens, oversight institutions and 'insiders') offers critical knowledge about the pressure points that must be addressed, useful for possible revision of rules by policymakers
- Supports researchers in further identifying discrepancies between law in the books and law in action by mapping living practices that shape administrative discretion 'outside' primary law
Table of Contents
Introduction
1:The Oversight Dilemma and Democratic Constraints of Official Secrets in the EU Constitutional Context
2:EU Regulation of Official Secrets
3:EU Practices of Official Secrets: Administrative Discretion in Practice Introduction
4:Access to Official Secrets and Reviewing Executive Secrecy
5:Closed Parliamentary Oversight and Secret Evidence in EU Courts
Conclusions |