Secrecy and Its Democratic Challenges in the European Union: The Cases of Security and Economic Governance

The European Union is gradually moving towards a comprehensive set of measures in sovereign-sensitive questions of security and economic policies, however its practice seems to counter its constitutional commitments to openness. Recent crises such as in Ukraine or Eurozone necessitated the EU’s prompt and efficient response, which the EU developed largely behind closed doors, driven by decision-makers who trust secrecy to be more adequate when solutions are to be found. For example, the current President of the European Commission openly stated that ‘monetary policy is a serious issue, we should discuss this in secret’ when questioned by the press in 2011 in his former role as Head of the Eurogroup. Another example of confidential negotiations is the EU’s biggest bilateral free trade agreement: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the US. Despite its many ramifications, all rounds of the negotiations have been closed for the public and the documents kept secret.

The EU’s secretiveness creates a challenge not merely for the legitimacy of the specific polices in question but for the overall EU project as citizens find themselves distant and unaware of the proper allocation of responsibilities between Brussels and national capitals or how these decisions impact their security and economic wellbeing.

This workshop will explore where and how is secrecy used in the EU’s security and economic governance. It will further offer suggestions of how secrecy should be managed in order to reconcile democratic accountability with legitimate policy interests that may require a certain degree of secrecy.