Transparency in the Institutionalisation of Transatlantic Relations: Dynamics of Official Secrets and Access to Information in Security and Trade

Abstract

This chapter analyses transparency in the context of the institutionalisation of transatlantic relations more specifically in the fields of security and trade. In both of these fields, the EU’s rules on transparency clash with (soft) norms and arrangements of official secrets mostly agreed solely between EU and US executives without parliamentary involvement or external oversight. The paper analyses the TFTP and TTIP as two relevant cases in unveiling the dynamics between access to information and official secrets in transatlantic relations. The chapter posits that despite the many limitations to access to information, transatlantic relations have contributed to better-defined legal limits to secrecy in the EU. Yet the chapter concludes that the EU regime of official secrets, largely resulting from security-driven cooperation, grants a wide discretion to US institutions on disclosure of information and would remain a concern for parliamentary access to information in the EU.