Suchergebnisse

The EU Treaties give voice to the strong global role that the EU asserts and illustrate how there would not seem to be many problems of a global scale that the EU would not like to contribute to solving. Managing development policy involves the translation of these extremely broad political objectives into individual projects that receive EU funding. In this process, fundamental political questions are frequently touched upon, and policy mistakes do take place. This Article discusses how the administrative procedures used to manage development policy contribute to establishing accountability. In EU documents, reference is frequently made to "ownership" by third countries involved. However, even though some elements of the packages build on negotiations with partners, in practice all key decisions relating to the allocation of money are unilateral EU decisions. "Ownership" in this context refers primarily to a wish that third country actors would embrace the EU agenda as its own and engage actively in its execution. The key challenges emerging from this discussion would seem to relate to unclear accountability relationships, in particular as regards the extraterritorial audience: the beneficiaries of EU assistance. In short, if you repeatedly declare that you plan to save the world, it just may happen that the world will wish to hold you accountable for that commitment. ; published version ; peerReviewed

This contribution considers how the values of transparency and efficiency are realised in the context of "EU negotiations" both in the internal and the external sphere. Legislating comes with a presumption of openness in the EU, while international negotiations have traditionally been assumed to require secrecy. However, irrespective of the basic paradigms, the institutions often appear to follow a rather simple rationale that secrecy makes better decisions, both in internal and external affairs. Similar efficiency concerns seem to relate to protecting the procedure of decision-making from external influence. Therefore, the fundamental trade-off between democratic accountability and efficiency in the external and internal fields might not be all that different: efficiency is linked with secrecy, and comes at a cost for participation and openness. I explain how the two paradigms—openness and transparency in legislative work and secrecy in international negotiations have recently developed, and how the values of openness and efficiency have been addressed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in its recent jurisprudence. This discussion witnesses to a possibility that the old secrecy paradigm might be about to break in international relations while a new transparency paradigm in EU legislative work is struggling to emerge. ; published version ; peerReviewed

This Article introduces our study into the operation of administrative law in EU external relations by introducing its general themes and fields of study. It starts by characterising the EU as a global actor and by illustrating how EU administrative law has developed in general, and in the area of external relations in particular. It then moves to examine the instrumental role that admin-istrative law plays in advancing the EU's external policy objectives, and the difficulties involved, fol-lowing from the general way in which many of these objectives have been defined. Building on Bovens' definition of accountability, we lay down a main framework for studying accountability in this context, and its different dimensions studied in the individual Articles: legal, political, financial, administrative and social. This Article then provides a general comparison of administrative action in the area of external action, building on general typologies of EU administrative action, with a view to laying the ground for an examination of the extent to which external relations is special. Finally, it closes with a brief introduction to one of the key themes in this Special Section: the scope of institutional discretion, and its link to the overall accountability of EU action in this area. ; published version ; peerReviewed

This short Article draws together some conclusions based on the contributions to the Special Section "The New Frontiers of EU Administrative Law: Is there a Gap in EU External Relations?". It concludes first that external action is a rich field in the application of EU administrative law. External policies are implemented and given effect through legal instruments and legally-prescribed procedures (including financial procedures) developed and controlled by administrative law and the Court of Justice. Second, as a result of mapping the types of administrative action in external policy fields we conclude that while the pattern of administrative action is shared with EU action more generally some distinctive types of external executive action can be identified, and external action demonstrates some distinctive qualities resulting in part from the multiplicity of actors and fora (including external) involved. Third, we conclude that despite very broad discretion in the implementation of policies the EU institutions are subject to administrative and legal constraints, including through the development of procedures in legislation, non-binding instruments and administrative practice. The Court has proved willing both to enforce procedural rules laid down in legislation and to require compliance with procedural principles such as the duty of care. ; published version ; peerReviewed

This contribution considers how the values of transparency and efficiency are realised in the context of "EU negotiations" both in the internal and the external sphere. Legislating comes with a presumption of openness in the EU, while international negotiations have traditionally been assumed to require secrecy. However, irrespective of the basic paradigms, the institutions often appear to follow a rather simple rationale that secrecy makes better decisions, both in internal and external affairs. Similar efficiency concerns seem to relate to protecting the procedure of decision-making from external influence. Therefore, the fundamental trade-off between democratic accountability and efficiency in the external and internal fields might not be all that different: efficiency is linked with secrecy, and comes at a cost for participation and openness. I explain how the two paradigms—openness and transparency in legislative work and secrecy in international negotiations have recently developed, and how the values of openness and efficiency have been addressed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in its recent jurisprudence. This discussion witnesses to a possibility that the old secrecy paradigm might be about to break in international relations while a new transparency paradigm in EU legislative work is struggling to emerge.

This contribution considers how the values of transparency and efficiency are realised in the context of "EU negotiations" both in the internal and the external sphere. Legislating comes with a presumption of openness in the EU, while international negotiations have traditionally been assumed to require secrecy. However, irrespective of the basic paradigms, the institutions often appear to follow a rather simple rationale that secrecy makes better decisions, both in internal and external affairs. Similar efficiency concerns seem to relate to protecting the procedure of decision-making from external influence. Therefore, the fundamental trade-off between democratic accountability and efficiency in the external and internal fields might not be all that different: efficiency is linked with secrecy, and comes at a cost for participation and openness. I explain how the two paradigms—openness and transparency in legislative work and secrecy in international negotiations have recently developed, and how the values of openness and efficiency have been addressed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in its recent jurisprudence. This discussion witnesses to a possibility that the old secrecy paradigm might be about to break in international relations while a new transparency paradigm in EU legislative work is struggling to emerge.

This paper discusses the legal and institutional aspects relating to risk-sharing mechanisms at EU level. For this purpose, an attempt will first be made to define a "risk-sharing mechanism" and the relevant legal framework, most notably the no bail-out clause included in Article 125 TFEU. Following this, the paper will discuss the core legal and institutional considerations relating to the European Stability Mechanism, prospects for euro-bonds and some variations of fiscal stabilisation mechanisms that have been presented in the discussion. In addition, the brief considers the June 2015 Five Presidents' Report on Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union and the plans it presents for further risk-sharing among the Member States and some of the earlier proposals that have been discussed in this context, even if they have not been included in the Five Presidents' Report. The brief places these proposals in a broader framework of legitimacy, accountability and "fairness", which in the context of the recent EMU Reports have usually been approached as separate or additional considerations. The argument made here is, however, that a more stable EMU needs to be broadly experienced as legitimate and fair. Consequently, these questions should be addressed together, as key considerations relating to the broader framework of how decisions are made in the EMU. ; The ADEMU Working Paper Series is being supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 European Union funding for Research & Innovation, grant agreement No 649396.

The recent years have witnessed a growing concern in the EU institutions for the ways in which openness and citizen participation are believed to distract efficient decision-making. Various examples of such attitudes can be easily identified, demonstrating how the EU institutions still fail to possess a deeper understanding of the role of transparency in legitimate governance. This paper discusses the ways in which the right of public access often turns into institutional politics with the institutions and the Member States in fact buttressing their own interests. This has serious consequences for the understanding of citizens' rights to participate in democratic decision-making. These questions are examined in the areas of legislative matters and international relations. The problems identified are then placed in the context of wider administrative culture in the relevant EU institutions, reflected in their responses to the citizens' concerns. The paper concludes with a few remarks on the wishes of the European Council to create greater legitimacy for the Economic and Monetary Union, and the role of openness in that discussion.

In the summer of 2010, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice handed down three significant rulings concerning the interpretation of some of the key principles of Regulation 1049/2001 on public access to documents held by the EU institutions- Case C-139/07 P, Commission v. Technische Glaswerke Ilmenau , C-28/08 P, Commission v. Bavarian Lager, Joined Cases C-514/07 P, 528/07 P & 532/07 P, Sweden v. API and Commission . The current analysis examines the state of openness in the EU after the three rulings, and places it in the context of the ongoing revision of the Regulation. In establishing that the Commission was right in arguing for "general presumptions" for secrecy, which exempt the institutions from examining the contents of documents individually in order to evaluate whether granting access to their contents cause harm to protected interests, and agreeing to a unduly wide interpretation of "privacy" the Court gave its blessing to a significant part of the Commission agenda to limit public access in the Union. The interpretation adopted by the Court gives serious reason for the legislature to amend the Regulation so as to guarantee that the Union is run as openly as possible.

The dominant narrative presents the Economic and Monetary Union as an incomplete structure which, to operate stably, needs to be supplemented by a deeper fiscal integration. We study the general features of the recent proposals for a fiscal stabilisation mechanism, intended to smooth the effects of asymmetric shocks on Member States, from a multi-disciplinary viewpoint, combining economic, legal and political analyses. While possible to construct within the current Treaties, we find the proposals economically and politically fragile, and likely to be unenforceable. Our gravest concern however relates to the envisaged broad macroeconomic conditionality, which is largely unconnected to the stability aims of the mechanism but has potential to undermine the democratic legitimacy of some of the Member States' most foundational societal choices.