This monograph offers a uniquely comprehensive and in-depth legal account of official secrets in the European Union. It critically analyses their implications for oversight and fundamental rights. Based on forty interviews with practitioners and other stakeholders, it offers an understanding of the practices of official secrets and provides a critical and much-needed perspective on how parliamentary, judicial and administrative oversight institutions deal with access to classified material and the dilemma of oversight to concurrently ensure secrecy necessary for EU security policies and openness needed for democratic processes and fundamental rights. The book discerns shifts in institutional practice of oversight at the European Parliament and the Court of Justice of the European Union that disproportionately favour secrecy and the protection of classified documents while creating serious limitations to open democratic deliberations and access to justice, and delivers new insights on the EU's development as a security actor as well as its autonomy from Member States, showing how rules on official secrets were a means for the EU to gain more autonomy in external security cooperation.

This edited volume offers a critical discussion of the trade-offs between transparency and secrecy in the actual political practice of democratic states in Europe. As such, it answers to a growing need to systematically analyse the problem of secrecy in governance in this political and geographical context. Focusing on topical cases and controversies in particular areas, the contributors reflect on the justification and limits of the use of secrecy in democratic governance, register the social, cultural, and historical factors that inform this process and explore the criteria used by European legislators and policy-makers, both at the national and supranational level, when balancing interests on the sides of transparency and secrecy, respectively. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of security studies, political science, European politics/studies, law, history, political philosophy, public administration, intelligence studies, media and communication studies, and information technology sciences.

The intersection between fiscal state aid and taxation has become more topical than ever. Mounting financial crises have left EU Member States scrambling to increase their tax revenue, balance their budgets, and attract capital. Taking advantage of these trends, multinational enterprises have lobbied for favourable tax arrangements, raising questions about the breadth of control the Commission can and should practise. To address egregious instances of favourable taxation, the Commission has tried to simultaneously use soft law and deploy Treaty rules on state aid. Fiscal State Aid Law and Harmful Tax Competition in the EU examines the use of state aid rules against national tax measures. Kyriazis's book presents a targeted investigation of these measures in two parts. The first part addresses Commission decisions and ECJ judgments of the early 2000s, which the author calls the "first wave". The second part consists of all the recent Commission decisions and investigations into tax schemes and individual tax rulings, most notably the Apple, Fiat, Starbucks, and Amazon investigations, which Kyriazis labels the "second wave". The characteristics and common threads of each wave are set out, their similarities and differences dissected, and their nexus to the EU's fight against harmful tax competition explored. Containing a thorough analysis of the legal concept of fiscal state aid under Article 107(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, this book will be of interest to scholars of European and International Tax law and practitioners working in the field of European competition law.

Currently, some 2,500 civilian experts work across Europe, Africa, and Asia in ten ongoing civilian missions launched under the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). Mandates cover a broad range of multidimensional tasks, such as rule of law support, law enforcement capacity building, or security sector reform. Numerous (recent) incidents from the field underscore that there are serious institutional as well as procedural weaknesses and irregularities tied to accountability in these EU peacebuilding missions. This title offers a comprehensive legal analysis and empirical study of accountability concerning the Union's peacebuilding endeavours, also referred to as civilian crisis management. Along with examining the governance credentials of EU peacebuilding, the monograph thoroughly scrutinizes de jure and de facto accountability arrangements of political, legal, and administrative nature existing in the domestic sphere, at EU level, and across levels. With a view to providing for a nuanced picture, the assessment further distinguishes between different accountability finalities and evaluates the appropriateness of existing accountability arrangements in civilian crisis management based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative criteria.

Key chapters, written by leading experts across the field, engage with important ongoing debates in the field of EU administrative law, focusing on areas of topical interest such as financial markets, the growing security state and problematic common asylum procedures. In doing so, they provide a summary of what we know, don’t know and ought to know about EU administrative law. Examining the control functions of administrative law and the machinery for accountability, this Research Handbook eloquently challenges areas of authoritarian governance, such as the Eurozone and security state, where control and accountability are weak and tackles the seemingly insoluble question of citizen ‘voice’ and access to policy-making.

Although legislation has in the past decades become the legal cornerstone of European integration, the EU legislature remains systematically neglected in EU legal scholarship. This book explores the virtues of the legislative process and the nature of legislative acts and asks how moving the legislature from the sidelines to the centre of legal analysis changes our understanding of the EU Court of Justice's role. The first part of the book examines how the CJEU should exercise its authority relative to the legislature. The author argues that as the legislature lends democratic legitimacy to EU law and is a better lawmaker than the judiciary, that judicial deference to the legislature's choices is required in all but exceptional circumstances. The second part of the book sets forth a theory of legislative interpretation that enables judicial officials to respect the wishes of the legislature. This theory shows, first, that the legislature can aggregate the intentions of individual legislators into a coherent legislative intent, and second, how this legislative intent can be identified from the publicly available legislative material.

Collegiality is a core legal principle of the European Commission's internal decision-making, acting as a safeguard to the Commission's supranational character and ensuring the Commission's independence from EU Member States. Despite collegiality's central role within the Commission, its legal and political implications have remained critically underexamined. Collegiality in the European Commission sheds light on this crucial aspect of the Commission's work for the first time. In this novel study on collegiality, Maria Patrin proposes an innovative framework for assessing the Commission's institutional role and power. The book's first part legally examines collegiality, retracing collegial procedures and actors in different layers of decision-making -- from the Commission's services to the College of Commissioners. The second part of the book explores the implementation of collegiality through illustrative case studies, focusing on various Commission functions including legislative initiative, infringement proceedings, and economic governance. Partin's empirical analysis unveils a disconnect between the legal notion of collegiality and its concrete application in institutional practices. These variations raise normative questions on how to ensure the unity of the Commission as a collegial body despite the diversification of decision-making functions. They also invite a re-examination of the Commission's multifaceted role in the current EU institutional, legal, and political setting. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that delves into both the legal substance and the political-institutional practice of collegiality, this book offers a unique, behind-the-scenes insight into the Commission's decision-making processes, furthering our understanding of the EU's institutional system.