Inside and outside : EU external relations in focus

Abstract

Foreign affairs have always involved a degree of secrecy and the EU external action is no exception. Out of security concerns and to protect the confidentiality of international negotiations, EU foreign policy actors such as the Council and the European External Action Service (EEAS) manage access to information by classifying documents as ‘secret’. But how can such classification be reconciled with the EU principles that “decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen”? In this report, the authors critically examine how this balance is determined, and the role other EU institutions, including the Courts, play on this terrain.