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Abstract
How can we understand the role of secrecy in the making of the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP)? This article analyses the nature of secrecy and questions some of the main assumptions surrounding the concept. In this respect, it argues that secrecy may be of functional necessity for policy-makers and actually compatible with good governance. Moreover, we must not put too much stock in transparency alone in that the relationship between secrecy and transparency is not zero-sum ‒ historically, transparency has sometimes been an instrument of control and domination. The article considers the case of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) to shed light on what kind of secrecy exists in the foreign policy area, and argues that this is mainly a combination of functional and compound secrecy.
Notes
1. Since I have already established the causal relationship between CSDP cohesion and committee agency elsewhere, the goal in this paper is not primarily to review this part of the argument, but rather to focus on secrecy.
2. Interview, Dutch PSC Ambassador Robert Milders, January 2009.
3. Interview, Finnish PSC Ambassador Anne Sipiläinen, February 2009.
4. Interview with French Nicolaidis delegate Quentin Weiler, January 2009.
5. Here the EUMC refers to the permanent military representatives based in Brussels, rather than the Chiefs of Defence in the capitals whom they represent.
6. Interview with Greek EUMC representative Kourkoulis Dimitrios, June 2009.
7. Interview with Dutch EUMC military representative General A.G.D. van Osch, March 2009.
8. Interview with Romanian EUMC military representative General Sorin Ioan, February 2009.
9. Interview with German deputy-EUMC representative Colonel Peter Kallert, June 2009.
10. Interview with Italian Chief of the Operations & Exercises Branch, Colonel Italian Air Force Benedetto Liberace, June 2009.
11. The Council decision setting up Civcom stipulates that the committee’s role is to ‘provide information, formulate recommendations and give advice on civilian aspects of crisis management’ (Council Document Citation2000).
12. Interview of Belgian Civcom delegate Koenraad Dassen, May 2009.
13. Interview of anonymous Civcom delegate, May 2009.