Abstract
International negotiations are an essential part of the European Union’s (EU) external affairs. A key aspect to negotiations is access to and sharing of information among the EU institutions involved as well as to the general public. Oversight of negotiations requires insight into the topics of negotiation, the positions taken and the strategies employed. Concurrently, however, some space for confidentiality is necessary for conducting the negotiations and defending EU interests without fully revealing the limit negotiating positions of the EU to the negotiating partner. Hence, attaining a balance between the necessities of oversight and confidentiality in negotiations is the subject of a dynamic debate between the EU institutions. This paper provides a joint analysis on EU oversight institutions’ position on transparency in international negotiations. We set out to answer whether parliamentary, judicial and administrative branches of oversight are allies in pursuing the objectives of transparency but also examine when their positions diverge.
Highlights
International negotiations are an essential part of the European Union’s (EU) external affairs
This paper questioned the general assumption in the literature that EU oversight institutions are in favour of transparency in international negotiations and that traditionally EU executive institutions prefer some level of secrecy in the international arena
The paper sought to analyse the positions of the EU oversight institutions towards transparency in a more holistic manner and examine their interplays in delivering transparency
Summary
International negotiations are an essential part of the European Union’s (EU) external affairs. Politics and Governance, 2017, Volume 5, Issue 3, Pages 75–86 affairs (Meissner, 2016), and how its role in external relations impacts the EU’s constitutional fabric (Cardwell, 2011; Eckes, 2014; Krauss, 2000) These studies in principle point to the executive and semi-executive institutions, the Commission and Council respectively, as actors with a preference for space for confidentiality rather than openness of negotiations. The specific contribution of this paper is to provide insights on the space where contestations on the necessary levels of transparency and secrecy between institutions are discussed To this end, we study the positions of different EU (oversight) institutions on the limits of transparency in foreign policy. We first discuss the contextualisation of institutional preferences and explain the methodology through which we seek to identify these preferences
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