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PhD Projects 

Financial Crisis, EU Finance Policy and National Sovereignty

As a consequence of the financial crisis EU has strengthened its focus on national financial policy in the Member States. The purpose of this research project is to analyse the EU initiatives in this field and the impact they have had on national Constitutional Law in the Member States. The study can be conducted as a comparative analysis on how the sovereignty of the Member States formally and informally is being affected by this development.

Contact: Professor Helle Krunke

Political control of intelligence services

The Government Commission on the Danish Security and Intelligence Service and the Danish Defence Intelligence Service set down in 1998 is expected at the earliest possible date to deliver its report including a draft bill to the Minister of Justice. According to its mandate, the Commission is not supposed to treat "the question about a strengthening of the democratic control of the services".

  On the other hand, the international legal debate has focused on the complex of problems concerning the possibility of and, maybe even, the desirability of a political control of intelligence gathering, with a growing intensity post 9/11 following from the increased resources and the extended authorities given to such services.

  In September 2011, the Directorate-General for Internal Policies under the European Parliament has brought the dispute to the fore by publishing a major report,  "Parliamentary Oversight of Security and Intelligence Agencies in the European Union", about the oversight of national security and intelligence agencies by parliaments and specialised non-parliamentary oversight bodies. The report is based on studies of the legal and institutional frameworks in selected European and non-European democracies in order for the European Parliament to seek inspiration to strengthen the political control of the EU-bodies like Europol, Eurojust and Frontex, being the platforms of cooperation between the nation states in the area of internal policies. This type of control embraces access to classified information, too.

  An enhanced control of this kind by politicians - not least in international fora - will raise a range of constitutional questions of  principle, since national services' averting the danger to the safety of the Realm is among the constitutive elements of state sovereignty. On top of this comes the classical question about a possible inefficiency of intelligence gathering, created through an increased risk of harmful dissemination of information.

  A Ph.D.-project about the political control of intelligence services must be comparative in a horizontal sense (by comparing regulations, institutions and practices in different countries) and in a vertical sense (by comparing these countries with a possible EU-institution).

Contact: Professor Henning Koch