Polscieu

Yearly Archives: 2017

Leaking and leak prevention in the European Commission

Published on 21 November 2017 by Ronny Patz

============= UPDATE (15 December 2017): The European Ombudsman has concluded that the European Commission did not provide me with sufficient access to documents in my research on EU leaks. The full case assessment by the Ombudsman is published here. The Commission now has time until March to reassess my requests for access. ============= Today, my […]

Freedom of information in international organizations

Published on 29 October 2017 by Ronny Patz

One year ago, I sent an email to the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, David Kaye (@davidkaye), in reaction to a public consultation, not knowing whether it mattered. Now that his report on “Access to Information in International Organizations” is published, I realized that I was one […]

Why the EU should start contingency-planning for Brexit budget cuts

Published on 31 March 2017 by Ronny Patz

I’ve just read Jon Worth’s blog post about why he’s calm about the start of the Article 50 negotiations that will most likely lead to Brexit, even if these negotiations are heading to a fight. After spending the best of my last three years researching budgeting in international organisations, including the effects of budget cuts […]

UN budgets for 2018-19 : tracing decision-making across the UN system [regularly updated]

Published on 28 March 2017 by Ronny Patz

In our research on UN budgeting (results and early insights published for example here, here, here), we follow budget procedures throughout the UN system, in particular in the UN proper and in the Specialised Agencies of the UN. This post collects the most relevant documents, in particular UN system budget outlines, proposals, and final budgets adopted. The […]

(UPDATED) Consequences of the Trump budget cuts for the United Nations

Published on 16 March 2017 by Ronny Patz

Today, the scale of the budget cuts of the Trump administration to the United Nations system has been officially announced; and this could be massive. According to various reports – Foreign Policy, Washington Post, IRIN News (great visuals!), CBS News, UN Dispatch, PassBlue, Al Jazeera – up to 37% of the current US contributions to the UN cut be […]

The President’s joke: Bill Clinton shouts ‘Fire’ at the United Nations

Published on 27 February 2017 by Ronny Patz

Last year, I spent some days in the UN archives in New York to find out more about the topic of my current research on budgeting in the United Nations. As I am going through the material (hundreds of photos of archive documents), I stumbled over a document that is only incidentally relevant to my research: […]

Leaking in the European Commission: Is it in its DNA?

Published on 22 February 2017 by Ronny Patz

For a paper (SocArXiv preprint version) I am writing in the context of my research on EU leaks, I looked at all disciplinary proceedings against leakers in the European Commission from 2006 to 2015, as documented in the annual reports of the IODC, its internal investigation office. Here’s the data that I extracted from IODC’s annual […]