Source: http://europaeuslaw.blogspot.com/2012/10/top-secret-intelligence-in-europe.html
Timestamp: 2017-05-30 07:19:44
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Matched Legal Cases: ['CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ', 'CJEU ']

europæus|law: Top Secret Intelligence in Europe: A Tipping Point in Luxembourg? (Guest Post)
Top Secret Intelligence in Europe: A Tipping Point in Luxembourg? (Guest Post)
This guest post is by Deirdre Curtin, Professor of European Law at the University of Amsterdam and Director of the Amsterdam Centre for
European Law and Governance (ACELG). This term, she is also a visiting fellow at
NYU Law School. This post originally
appeared originally on acelg.blogactiv.eu
and we are pleased to cross-post it here.
Kadi is back
in Luxembourg and with a vengeance! The timing is interesting both for the case
itself and more generally for highlighting the use of secret intelligence and
evidence to justify detention and other sanctions.
To start with the case itself, the oral hearing of the new
Kadi case (Kadi 2) took place in Luxembourg earlier this week before the
Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU). After 11 years on a UN freezing of
assets list, Mr. Kadi was actually de-listed by the UN Al Qaeda
Sanctions Committee some 10 days prior to that and then, a week later, by the European Commission. The immediate issue is of course one of the
(continuing) admissibility of the appeal. Is there in fact still an interest in
the CJEU adjudicating the case in these new and changed circumstances? The
appealing Union institutions, the Commission and the Council, (supported by a
total of 13 Member States intervening in the procedures) argued
during the oral hearing that the interest is in having “the law”
authoritatively clarified on the matter. For Mr Kadi rather the position is that the appeals should be dismissed as having no further legal significance since the Commission had withdrawn its own regulation 2 days before the hearing so it has no interest in continuing to argue for its legality.
Almost irrespective of what the Court actually does in this
particular case, this long strung out litigation (together with the many other
sanctions decisions challenged before the Luxembourg courts in recent years and
still pending where the issue of secret evidence is more directly at issue) is of much wider structural significance in terms of the secrecy
culture that is entrenched (and inter-locked) at all levels of government,
including increasingly the supranational level. This structural issue is likely
to continue to come before the Courts in Luxembourg in a variety of ways given
the Union’s expanded practice in the fields of internal and external security
(on the supranational context of this more general security landscape, see my 2011 lecture Top Secret Europe).
The core issue that I want to raise here is whether
governments at all levels of governance (national, supranational and
international) can continue to deny courts (and in particular the CJEU) access
to highly classified information so that they can provide judicial review on
the merits. Will the CJEU more generally and definitively establish the limits
on EU executive power (Commission and Council but potentially also applying to
other actors in the future, such as Europol or the European External Action
Service) in terms of secrecy and refusal of access to classified information
shared with other actors both nationally and internationally (and vice
versa)? Or at least provide some more substantive guidance in this respect that
relates to the underlying facts in the case before it?
To go back to the facts, Mr. Kadi was listed by the UN
originally in 2001 on the basis of (presumably) ‘top secret’ classified
intelligence provided by one or more members of the Security Council. But the
problem seems to be actually more acute: as the UN Special Rapporteur on human
rights while countering terrorism pointed out in 2010, the UN Sanctions
Committee taking the listing decision may itself not ever have full
access to the classified information held by the State seeking the listing. In
other words, the practice of listing individuals by the UN may be serially
taking place on the basis of secret and undisclosed intelligence.
In line with standard security practices and the originator
control principle (ORCON), originators of intelligence material in any event
retain control over whom this information is revealed to. This means in
practice that such (highly) classified information will not be revealed to those
listed or their lawyers but also not necessarily to the UN itself nor to
regional organizations such as the EU who take their own (derivative) listing
When it comes to the EU implementing UN lists of terrorist
suspects, it too does so without ever having fully seen or possessing all the
evidence in question to support that decision with regard to named individuals.
If it does not possess that evidence it is also unable to submit it to the
Court in the event of a legal challenge and despite being ordered to do so by
the Court. This is a structural problem for the Court.
When it comes to intelligence information supplied by EU Member
States in the context of what are termed the autonomous EU lists
(e.g. France in the earlier case involving the PMOI) the situation is different at least
in theory. The Courts can demand to receive access to the classified
information that led to the EU listing but here too –and despite the fact that
the Council actually possesses the information in question- they will not
necessarily receive it. This is because of the operation of the principle of
originator control as a matter of EU rules as well as specific national rules.
In the PMOI case for example even though the
Council had (most of) the actual information in its possession and it had in
fact been distributed to the other Member States, France could – and did – refuse
access to the Court. It could do so because of the application of the principle
of originator control and the fact that its national law required it to do so
in the circumstances. The Council subsequently produced one
‘confidential’ document to the Court that was not provided to the PMOI (as well
as other non-confidential documents) but could not produce the documents France
refused. It is arguable that at the very least it is the Council itself that
needs to assess whether the need for ‘confidentiality’ claimed by a Member
State (France) is genuine and sufficient. Even then, it is up to the Court to
review in full the exercise of the Member State discretion. It can
only do so if it is given access to the confidential documents in question.
There is clearly a Catch 22 situation here: national and
third party classification rules and systems may result in the courts simply
not being given access. This constitutes the bulk of classified information
being shared at the Union level, subject to the originator control principle.
The easier question is whether the Council and other Union institutions and
agencies can deny the Luxembourg Courts access to classified information that
requires a security clearance (confidential or above) that has been actually classified
at the supranational level (European Union Classified Information)? Here it
seems fairly obvious that they cannot, even if they have used other sources in
drawing up that document (the principle of derivative classification).
If the Court requests such EU documents/information as part
of ongoing judicial proceedings then Union institutions (and agencies) cannot
plead their own internal rules of procedure and decisions based on them to
refuse access to the Court. In practice, the General Court is particularly
active in, as a “measure of inquiry” (Article 65 of its Rules of Procedure),
seeking and receiving access to EU classified information that is denied to the
applicants and other parties and in keeping that information confidential from
the other parties to the proceedings (a type of de facto closed material
Access to classified information is the key in terms of
effective accountability also in legal terms by a judge or tribunal. The
question is by whom and how. What worked ultimately in the UN system after 11
years in terms of results (de-listing) is the fact that under the new special
procedure instituted by the UN in the aftermath of the first Kadi judgment the
(newly created) Ombudsperson was able to negotiate (some) access to
classified information in individual files. On this basis she (Judge Kimberly
Prost) makes recommendations to the UN Committee in question based also it
seems on access she has obtained to classified intelligence evidence by States
supporting the original and continued listing.
Despite an ongoing struggle by the Ombudsperson to actually obtain
access to classified information, a process that she has negotiated bit by bit
and with some success with a limited number of individual states who are
frequently an object of listing petitions (for the latest list of these States
and types of agreements, see here),
she has already a considerable track record of recommending and obtaining
de-listing decisions. She produces bi-annual reports and the success rate is
certainly impressive: in a total of 21 completed cases by the Ombudsperson
(since mid-2010) only one request for de-listing was denied by the UN Sanctions
Committee (one was withdrawn and one is still pending). In a total of 18 cases
the decision by the UN Committee was to delist (individuals or entities; one
list was ‘amended’). Mr Kadi is the latest to be delisted to date.
Yet the issue of access to classified information remains
absolutely critical and by no means a foregone conclusion in the UN context. In
the words of the Ombudsperson herself, in her latest report to the Security Council: “the challenges related to access to
classified/confidential information remain pressing and significant… further
progress is urgently needed…lack of access to confidential/classified
information has been a concern in at least four recent cases.”
As we have seen, the challenges related to access to
classified/confidential information are equally omnipresent in the EU system
where the CJEU has far-reaching judicial powers in individual cases
brought before it and the responsibility to ensure effective judicial
protection. The crucial question that the CJEU is going to have to sooner or
later address is: what procedural system can it for the future devise at the
level of the supranational judicial system to deal with the issue of classified
material being viewed by persons with the appropriate level of security
clearances (either members of the Court itself or security cleared ‘special
friends’ of the Court as in some national systems)?
Or should the CJEU institute –formally- a closed material
procedure? Article 79 of the new amended rules of procedure of the CJEU that will enter into force on 1
November 2012 enables cases to be held “in camera” for “serious reasons
related, in particular to the security of the Member States…” and without
publication of such oral proceedings. At the same time holding the oral part of
legal proceedings “in camera” is not the same as laying down a specific
procedure that enables (member of) a court (security cleared) or a type of
‘special advocate’ to access classified information and keep it confidential
from the applicants but nonetheless act on their behalf. Yet, in Canada
reliance on expert judges was found to be constitutionally insufficient and in
the UK reliance on a regime of ‘special advocates’ has been challenged and
narrowed by various requirements that demand the ‘gist’ of the allegations to
Luxembourg is being closely watched – not only in Brussels
and national capitals but also in New York and perhaps closest of all – in
Washington. At the hearing in Luxembourg in Kadi 2 this week, a
number of lawyers from the US State department in the courtroom were present,
observing the proceedings and listening keenly to the exchanges between the
judges and the lawyers for the parties to the proceedings. They too understand
that the case can have much wider implications than just for the future
possibilities of Mr. Kadi to initiate further legal proceedings (seeking
damages or otherwise).
Beyond secrecy, this case raises very squarely the issue of
accountability of executive power in the composite legal and political orders
of the EU. It shows the manner in which national executive power intertwines
with supranational executive power and that in turn with international /global
executive power and the risk that it may ultimately be ‘unbound’ in the absence
of accountability forums who can adjudicate in individual cases on the basis of
all the information (see further my book Executive Power in the European Union from 2009). The Court of Justice
holds an important key in this sense and it will be revealing to see how it
will handle classified information in the wider context of effective judicial
What is however missing is an open public debate
that reaches beyond the (governmental) insiders’ interest in preserving the
existing system come what may (thirteen Member State governments lined up
with the Commission and the Council against Mr. Kadi). There is--sadly--virtually no space for an open debate on what broadly constitutes the public
interest. This is not necessarily consonant with the interest of the
executive power itself at whatever government level it is operating.
There is of course in any democratic society a need for necessary secrecy
on security related matters but it is not ‘unbound’: it must be limited and
made accountable in one form or another. Time will tell whether a tipping point
has been reached in Luxembourg at least with regard to the use of secret
intelligence by the supranational executive power in a manner that deprives
individuals of their rights to due process and effective judicial protection.
The challenge is to find a procedural way of balancing claims that intelligence
sources and methods must be kept secret in a less rights invasive manner than
the use of secret evidence in non-criminal procedures. The Luxembourg courts,
unlike the UN Ombudsperson and the UN Sanctions Committee, have the power to
provide a judicial remedy to a person who has been listed, perhaps on
the basis of flawed secret intelligence used as evidence to justify the
listing. For now, all eyes will continue to watch Luxembourg.
Top Secret Europe,