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Are experts back in fashion? Four scenarios concerning the contestation of expertise in the European Union
21 May 2021There has been substantial political debate over the last decade about the role of experts in policymaking. But how are these trends likely to develop in future? Drawing on a new edited volume, Vigjilenca Abazi, Johan Adriaensen and Thomas Christiansen set out four distinct scenarios concerning the future role of expertise in policymaking within the EU. -
‘Inside’ the European Parliament’s Closed Reading Rooms: Transparency in the EU
2 October 2016Published on MLR blogs . What do documents about negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), oversight of the EU’s Food Safety Authority or Tax-Justice have in common? In order to access these documents, (selected) Members of the European Parliament are requested to attend closed reading rooms. This blog post discusses how an exception to open parliamentary oversight is increasingly becoming a regular institutional practice and questions its spillover effect on requests for public access to documents. -
Safe Harbour Case: Safeguarding European Fundamental Rights or Creating a Patchwork of National Data Protection?
14 October 2015On Tuesday, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union declared the Commission’s US Safe Harbour Decision invalid. The Court’s ruling in Case C-362/14 of the Austrian Internet activist Maximillian Schrems v the Irish Data Protection Commissioner is a milestone in the protection of European fundamental rights, but it also preserves space for different national supervisory standards and national discretion on whether data may actually be transferred. Is the ruling opening the way for a patchwork of national data protection? How does this ruling...