Successive ICJ Presidents have expressed concern about the proliferation of international tribunals and substantive fragmentation of international law. This is not a new phenomenon. International law has always lacked a clear normative and institutional hierarchy. The problem is more how new institutions have used international law to further new interests, especially those not predominant in traditional law. The anxiety among ICJ judges should be seen less as a concern for abstract “coherence” than a worry about the demise of traditional principles of diplomatic law and the Court's privileged role as their foremost representative. As jurisdictional conflicts reflect divergent political priorities, it is unclear that administrative co-ordination can eliminate them. This does not, however, warrant excessive worries over fragmentation; it is an institutional expression of political pluralism internationally.

Who controls the information that is part of the EU legislative processes and is the process as a whole under control? This article explores the legal framework and the applicability of that framework to evolving informal practices by the three key institutions (EP, Council, Commission) involved in the EU legislative process. Given the legislative deadlock on an updated transparency regulation, there are challenges relating to the opacity of Council and Member State positions, legal advice and the so-called four-column documents, which are used to map out progress in interinstitutional negotiations. Currently, the institutions themselves keep control and adopt the relevant rules as a matter of internal (or interinstitutional) working arrangements. We argue that when the institutions exercise legislative functions they are in fact exercising highly political functions that define the fundamental policy choices of the Union’s action. This requires not only passive transparency in the form of access to documents but also proactive transparency by the institutions themselves.

The aim of this article is to discuss the position of common values in defining the EU's identity by using the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) as an example. It is argued that the notion 'common values' is used by the EU institutions as both a universal and as an EU concept, which highlights the abstract nature of these values. This abstraction is also reflected in the way in which Russia has recently aimed to develop its own set of values which could be adopted by its neighbouring countries. The abstraction of values means that, in practice, their meaning in the context of ENP is decided by the EuropeanCommission through the implementation of Action Plans. The central position given to the promotion of common values requires that the ENP be reformulated so as to guarantee a stronger degree of participation of the neighbouring countries in the formulation and implementation of the ENP objectives.

This contribution considers how the values of transparency and efficiency are realised in the context of "EU negotiations" both in the internal and the external sphere. Legislating comes with a presumption of openness in the EU, while international negotiations have traditionally been assumed to require secrecy. However, irrespective of the basic paradigms, the institutions often appear to follow a rather simple rationale that secrecy makes better decisions, both in internal and external affairs. Similar efficiency concerns seem to relate to protecting the procedure of decision-making from external influence. Therefore, the fundamental trade-off between democratic accountability and efficiency in the external and internal fields might not be all that different: efficiency is linked with secrecy, and comes at a cost for participation and openness. I explain how the two paradigms-openness and transparency in legislative work and secrecy in international negotiations have recently developed, and how the values of openness and efficiency have been addressed by the Court of Justice of the European Union in its recent jurisprudence. This discussion witnesses to a possibility that the old secrecy paradigm might be about to break in international relations while a new transparency paradigm in EU legislative work is struggling to emerge.