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We went to see the movie “Official Secrets” this weekend, starring Keira Knightley in the role of Iraq War whistleblower Katharine Gun (UK). The film is based on the book “The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War”, and earlier this year Gun also talked to The Guardian (podcast) about her story. For the past decade, […]
I have promised to blog more frequently this year and to share how life and work as a political scientist looks like from my end. For this week’s post, I use the occasion of Vigjilenca Abazi‘s announcement that her monograph “Secrecy and Oversight in the EU” is soon to be published with Oxford University Press (Buy it! Read […]
I just read the summary of last week’s EU Commission meeting (18 July 2012), and in there I stumbled over a very interesting quote from a discussion on two recent EU Court rulings*: “The PRESIDENT [Barroso] said that the potential consequences of these judgments were very far-reaching; leaving aside the damage done to the Commission’s reputation by […]
You may wonder: What is the most important, the most pressing, and thus the most recurring problem in EU policy-making for EU member states? The financial and economic crises? The European agriculture? High-speed internet for disconnected regions? Not really. In fact, the most recurring problem is “delegated acts“, a special legal instrument introduced by […]
“[W]hen we speak of EU primary law, we are referring to a kind of legal text that even law experts have hard time digesting (and of course the question is whether those who sign these treaties really know what they are doing?)” (Protesilaos Stavrou) I wanted to write this blog post for a while but […]
The EU Council has in fact changed its procedure for access to documents as I speculated last month. The introduction of a written procedure when dealing with appeals (‘confirmatory applications’) seems to have come in reaction to an own-initiative report issued by the EU Ombudsman last June. However, the new procedure does not come without conflict […]
As an academic working on EU affairs you are sometimes forced to read EU law, even if that is not the most beautiful prose you come across in your life. On one of these EU law journeys I had to read the “Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on […]
1 1/2 months ago, I’ve requested a meeting protocol of the Chefs de Cabinet of the EU Commission. As blogged before, my initial request received a negative reply.
I appealed this decision, and – as I have also blogged – on 6 September I was informed that the Commission needed an additional 15 working days. Yesterday, I have received the following answer: […]
As reported one month ago, I’ve requested a meeting protocol of a meeting of the Chef de Cabinets of the European Commission, which I need for my research. Having requested the document on 30 July 2011, the Commission refused to grant me any access on 12 August, and so on 12 August I filed a confirmatory […]
Yesterday, the EU Commission published its report on the application of the EU access to documents regulation in 2010 (PDF). The report gives some interesting figures, but one should see them in relation to reality, which shall be done below. A) The report’s figures in a quick and selective summary: In 2010, there were 6127 […]
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