Interoperable information sharing and the five novel frontiers of EU governance : a special issue

Abstract

Information exchanges between authorities located at different levels of administration, and in different Member States, have always constituted a central feature of European Union governance. Nevertheless, the increasingly pervasive phenomenon of interoperable information-sharing, where information systems pertaining to different policy fields are joined up to facilitate exchanges of (personal) data, generates new structural challenges to the European Union from a political, legal, and indeed constitutional perspective.In this introduction, besides offering a brief overview of the contributions to the special issue, we argue that interoperability shifts the frontiers of EU governance in at least five distinct respects. It shifts existing boundaries in the divisions of power within the EU; in the reach of its data protection laws; in the tensions between the EU's commitment to fundamental rights and the principle of mutual trust between the Member States; in the relations between EU, third state, and international authorities; and lastly, between the technicalities of information technologies and critical ethical and constitutional imperatives.