Official secrets and the negotiation of international agreements: Is the EU executive unbound?

Publishers Abstract:
Supranational executive power is mutating at the level of the EU political system and is not always recognized for what it is in descriptive terms, or where and by whom it is being exercised. Managing access to official information is an important exercise of executive power that is no less crucial than other more visible executive powers. EU security rules receive little attention from "outsiders", the few -- descriptive or pragmatic -- analyses that exist are by EU officials themselves with an inside view of necessity and effectiveness as to why the rules were drafted in a certain way in the first place and later applied.

This article aims to fill the gap in the existing literature on the intersection of internal institutional "security" rule making by the plural EU executive with legislative and Treaty requirements, and in particular with parliamentary and public oversight mechanisms applied specifically to recent practice of negotiations on international agreements.

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