Suchergebnisse

This paper discusses the legal effects of a seemingly paradoxical situation: an international agreement falls at least in part within the exclusive competence of the Community, and yet the Member States are parties to the agreement and the Community is not. This situation, while not common, is not as unusual as we might imagine. It may occur for several reasons: it may be decided that it is in the Community interest, for political or other reasons, that the Member States rather than the Community should participate; it may be the case that only States, and not regional economic integration organisations (REIOs) such as the EC, are entitled to participate; it may be that when the agreement was originally concluded the Member States were competent - since then, however, EC exclusivity has 'supervened'. In cases such as these the European Court of Justice has taken the view that the Member States party to the agreement are acting on behalf of the Community, and in its interests. The legal questions explored in this paper arise out of the fact that the international agreement is not formally a 'Community agreement' within the scope of Article 300 EC and thus the matters regulated by that provision, including the binding nature of the agreement as far as the Community is concerned, and its place in the Community legal order, are not expressly resolved. Although these agreements are in some senses anomalous, and their position in the Community legal order may be ambiguous, they also illustrate the constraints under which the Member States – although fully sovereign States – may operate as a result of their Community obligations, the way in which the international identity of the Union may be represented by the Member States, and the accommodations possible between the demands of the Community legal order and the practical exigencies of international treaty-making.

Since the Conclusions of the European Council on the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) at Tampere in 1999 the Union has recognised the significance of the external dimension to this policy field, and over the last decade the Union's activity in this field has both intensified and broadened to include not only migration, border management and asylum but all aspects of the AFSJ, ranging from counter-terrorism to civil procedure. Although the scope of external action reflects the fragmentation of the subject matter and the AFSJ lacks an easily identifiable policy objective, there are ways in which we can identify certain common elements in the approach to external AFSJ policy, in particular in managing the relationship between different actors. This paper seeks to explore some of these distinctive elements; its purpose is to set out some of the particular legal features of external AFSJ policy. First, to examine the basis for and the scope of external competence given that there is no explicit provision in the EC Treaty for external action in the field. Second, the legal implications of the inter-pillar nature of the AFSJ: the consequences this has for the types of instrument available to the Union and the legal constraints imposed by the need to 'police' the boundary. And finally the paper explores the relationship between Union / Community action and Member State action: the possibility of exclusive Community competence, the mechanisms developed to manage shared competence and the additional complexity created by the varying 'opt-outs' for some Member States.

The following Report will be presented to the 22nd FIDE Congress to be held in Limassol, Cyprus, 1-4 November 2006. It has been prepared in response to a questionnaire devised by the General Rapporteur, Professor Piet Eeckhout, which is reproduced as an Annex. It seeks to do two things: first, to respond to the questions and issues raised by the General Rapporteur, and second to comment on some issues and recent developments which are particularly relevant to the relationship between the European Union and its Member States in the external relations field. These include the obligation on Member States when exercising their own external competence to comply with their Community law obligations, including procedural obligations; issues relating to choice of legal base for external action, and in particular the impact of the pillar structure when characterising EU external action; international responsibility under mixed agreements; and the relationship between international law and EU law.

This paper will appear in Genèse et Destinée de la Constitution Européenne Commentaire du traité établissant une Constitution pour l'Europe à la lumière des travaux préparatoires et perspectives d' avenir edited by Giuliano Amato, Hervé Bribosia and Bruno De Witte. It seeks to assess, on a selective basis, the provisions in the Constitutional Treaty which relate to the Union's external action. In doing so it considers issues of consistency, competence, the partial integration of the pillars and remaining questions concerning the legal nature of the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy, the Common Security and Defence Policy, the procedures for concluding international agreements and the common commercial policy. Institutional aspects of external action, and in particular the creation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, are considered elsewhere in the volume and are therefore not covered here. Consideration is also given to the extent to which it would be possible, and/or desirable, to incorporate the changes made by the Constitutional Treaty into a revised text or an alternative Treaty.