The Perception of the EU Legal Order in International Law: An In- and Outside View

Author(s):  
Christina Binder ◽  
Jane A. Hofbauer
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Christina Eckes

Chapter 1 sets out the conceptual framework for the rest of the book. It first and foremost develops the meaning and relevance of structures of bonding that formally legally connect the Union and its citizens. One prominent example is the European Parliament’s legal mandate to represent EU citizens. The chapter further identifies the autonomy and effectiveness of the EU legal order as the unique features that set it apart from international organizations and international law. The potential of structures of bonding depends on these features. Chapter 1 also develops the mutually dependant relationships of autonomy, effectiveness, structures of bonding, and the legitimacy of the Union and its actions. It identifies different dimensions of legitimacy and emphasizes, drawing on Jürgen Habermas, justifiability or, even more precisely, worthiness of recognition (Annerkennungswürdigkeit) as the core of legitimacy. Justification to individuals, as EU citizens and national citizens, returns in all the following chapters as a necessary precondition for legitimacy and as the core potential of bonding structures.


Author(s):  
Christina Eckes

The European Union (EU) cannot make a plausible claim to sovereignty under international law. However, what the EU can do and what it also does is, is to act as if it were sovereign and claim certain rights that are considered core elements of state sovereignty. This article argues that the Court of Justice’s (ECJ) conception of the EU legal order as autonomous provides the EU with a core element of state sovereignty: jurisdictional sovereignty. Autonomy construed by the ECJ is best understood in conceptual legal and absolute terms. It is meant to shield the ECJ’s conceptual legal claims from interference. Legal autonomy as construed by the ECJ is not relative as many authors have claimed. It cannot come about in an incremental or relative manner. It cannot be based on arguments relating to the status of a self-contained regime of international law that gradually distances itself from the general rules of international law. It is a conceptual claim giving birth to the assumption of apriority that can only be made in categorical terms. In this way it is similar to sovereignty. The article first sets out how the autonomy of the EU legal order is best understood. It examines the ECJ’s case law in light of legal theoretical considerations and relates it to the separation thesis of Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law. It then explains that autonomy is of such relevance to the EU legal order because the aprioristic character of EU law remains essentially contested. This relevance indirectly explains why the Court so cautiously protects the autonomy of the EU legal order. Finally, the article examines the Court’s reasoning in Opinion 1/17 in light of the identified absolute conception of autonomy.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 321-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joris Larik

EU external relations law is a doubly peculiar field of scholarship that has attracted significant scholarly attention over the last several decades. It is both part of EU law—considered a “new legal order” distinct from international law—and it is concerned with the European Union as a global actor, a “strange animal” in that the EU is neither a state nor a classical international organization.


2019 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 320-360
Author(s):  
Adrian Dumitrescu-Pasecinic

Abstract In order to enter the Banking Union, non-euro EU Member States must ‘step outside’ the EU legal order and the Union’s institutional framework, and resort to unilateral instruments of public international law. If the intergovernmental method has advanced the alternative project of integration based on voluntary policy, international unilateralism is seen as a similar integration technique based on the voluntary action of non-euro Member States, ie a tool for deeper integration that appears as a variation of intergovernmentalism. This article focuses on the constitutional deficiencies caused by the choice of unilateral instruments in the institutional set-up of a close cooperation arrangement in the Single Supervisory Mechanism. At first sight, leaving the EU legal order and entering the world of international law opens entirely new perspectives for the participating Member States. The possible attraction is escaping the constraining institutional framework of EU law. However, the international law route poses significant constitutional challenges vis-à-vis compatibility with the EU law.


2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 463-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
SALVATORE FABIO NICOLOSI

AbstractThe development of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) has often revealed the tight interrelation between refugee law, humanitarian law and international criminal law. It has been argued that the latter bodies of law have, in fact, played a major role in the development of most key concept of the European Union asylum acquis.Drawing from the judgment issued by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Diakité, this article aims to prove that this assumption is not always true, especially with reference to the interpretation of specific concepts of international humanitarian law (IHL) and, in particular, the controversial notion of ‘internal armed conflict’. In tackling the sensitive issue of clarifying the meaning of ‘internal armed conflict’ in order to investigate the grounds to warrant subsidiary protection under the Qualification Directive, the Court provided an autonomous interpretation that goes beyond IHL, thus offering another occasion to investigate the interrelation between international law and the EU legal order.While contributing to the ongoing debate on the relationship between international law and the EU legal order, the article will consider the impact of the Court's reasoning on the EU asylum acquis, and will consider whether disconnecting the Qualification Directive from IHL, instead of producing further fragmentation of international law, may contribute to its defragmentation, conceived of as a harmonic co-ordination of different branches of law.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Pavlos Eleftheriadis

This chapter introduces the central legal and political interpretations of the European Union (EU). The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) suggests a federalist legal account when it speaks of EU law as a ‘new legal order’ and as ‘autonomous’ from international law and the law of the member states. This doctrine has met with resistance by the courts of the member states, which have refused to apply EU law without reference to their domestic constitution. The courts’ views can be seen as either a ‘constitutional’ approach, which we find in Neil MacCormick’s ‘pluralism’ under international law, or in the ‘pluralism’ defended by Mattias Kumm, Neil Walker, and others. But the general legal architecture of the EU is not only a theoretical but also a political problem. These legal interpretations correspond to rival political approaches, namely ‘federalism’, ‘statism’, and a new view proposed in this book ‘internationalism’. The most challenging political view of the EU, articulated for example by the historian Noel Malcolm, believes that it is actually a serious risk to self-government and democracy. Any legal and political interpretation of the treaties supporting the legitimacy of the EU requires that we have an effective response to this democratic challenge. Can the EU be democratically legitimate?


2015 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 829-874 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geert De Baere ◽  
Timothy Roes

AbstractComparing the EU law principle of loyalty with international law good faith and the duty of federal good faith in German constitutional law (Bundestreue), this article contributes to the discussion on the nature of the EU legal order and its relationship to international law more generally by finding that EU loyalty is in essence a specific incarnation of the international law principle that treaties are to be interpreted in good faith. At the same time, it challenges the assumption that international law good faith differs fundamentally from federal good faith. To this end, the article points at historical links between both, and posits that good faith is in essence a principle of constructive interpretation, the strictures of which increase with the level of integration of the legal order in which it is applied.


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