Shared Obligations and the Responsibility of an International Organization and Its Member States

Discussions on the allocation of international responsibility between an international organization and its member states do not comprehensively engage with the role of obligations in assigning responsibility to the organization and/or its members. The present article sets out what will be termed an obligations-based approach to the allocation of international responsibility by exploring the phenomenon of sharing international obligations by an international organization and its members, as well as the implications thereof for their responsibility under international law. It will do so by focusing on the practice of concluding mixed agreements by the EU and its member states, which commonly results in overlapping obligations for the organization and its members. It is ultimately argued that a distinction should be made between two types of shared obligations in mixed agreements in order to untangle who can be held responsible in case of a breach: the EU, the member state(s), or both.

Mixed Agreements

This chapter provides an overview of the development of the phenomenon of mixed agreements. It explains the legal and political reasons for the emergence and perseverance of mixed agreements. The chapter also analyses the legal limits to the use of mixed agreements, and discusses salient legal issues that arise with regard to their signature, conclusion, implementation, and interpretation. The above are introduced in the context of specific bilateral and multilateral mixed agreements. References and excerpts from the latest jurisprudential developments in this area feature prominently in the chapter.

On the Power of the Constitutional Court to Rule on the Compliance of Mixed Agreements with the Constitution

This study aims at examining the general characteristics of constitutional review of international treaties and highlighting its specificities with regard to mixed European Union agreements. Legal issues stem from the fact that, in this case, we are faced with international treaties concluded not only by the Bulgarian State but by the European Union together with the Member States and third countries. Since the competence of the European Union is exclusive in certain fields, the Union has to ‘mix’ its competences in external relations with that of the Member States in order to be able to act in all aspects of international relations. Although, the review of the constitutionality of mixed agreements does not reveal any specific situation with regard to the power of the Constitutional Court to rule on the compliance of the international treaties with the Constitution, the main issue is about the limitations of the Court, exercising a preliminary and ex post review of the constitutionality of international treaties in the case of a mixed agreement, in the light of the obligation of sincere cooperation, on the one hand, and the safeguarding of the constitutional identity of the Bulgarian State’s participation in the establishment and development of the European Union, on the other hand.

Terms of service as a ground for establishment of ownership to virtual property

Problem setting. Today, the use of numerous sites is allowed only with the consent of the user agreements (Terms of Service) offered by them. Most often, users tick them, which is tantamount to signing such agreements, without even reading. However, it turns out that in most cases, user agreements, which are essentially agreements between users and providers, are aimed only at securing the interests of providers and in fact impose significant restrictions on users without granting them any rights other than the right to use the service. In addition, providers create them in such a way as not to draw the attention of users to the presence of the contract in this relationship. Such agreements are generally placed as hyperlinks at the bottom of the page or are created as a step that the user must agree to during registration. On this basis, the question of the need to strengthen the protection of users’ rights as a weaker party to the contract, by analogy with consumer protection, is increasingly raised. Moreover, the possibility of considering a user agreement as a kind of contract is widely discussed. Analysis of recent researches and publications. Given the novelty of such a phenomenon as user agreement, today there are not many studies devoted to them, especially in domestic science. Among foreign researchers of the legal nature and specifics of user agreements can be mentioned K. Cornelius, L. Belli and J. Venturini, T. Romm, P. Randolph, M. Radin, A. Savelyev, N. Vlasova. Thus, there is a lack of domestic research on the legal nature of user agreements, so there is an urgent need for research in this area. Target of research is to study the legal nature of the user agreement and analyze the possibility of it to become a ground for legal relationships, in particular, a ground for establishment of ownership to virtual property. Article’s main body. The article analyzes the possibility of considering user agreements as potential grounds for the emergence of ownership to virtual property. The judicial practice to protect the rights of users of accounts and European approaches to the protection of user rights are analyzed in the article. The research data, which give grounds to speak about violation of user rights by user agreements are given. In turn, this gives reason to question the possibility of considering the user agreement as a kind of contract. However, the analysis performed allows us to conclude that it is possible to consider the user agreement as a mixed contract, which can potentially serve as a ground for the emergence of virtual property rights. Conclusions and prospects for the development. Terms of Service agreements should be considered as mixed agreements that contain elements of several agreements. In particular, in the context of the emergence of virtual property rights from such agreements, elements of the Terms of Service agreement should be distinguished, which determine the legal consequences for the virtual property created within the online platforms. In the doctrine, the concept of virtual property as a kind of property right is already quite common today, and this kind of right may well arise from the contract, which in this case may be the Terms of Service agreement. If the Terms of Service agreement is recognized as the ground for the emergence of virtual property rights, it is necessary to provide in it how the balance of interests of platform developers and users in relation to virtual property will be determined. Obviously, all the features of the implementation and protection of virtual property rights, cases of its restriction will be specified in the contract.

Part II The Treaty-Makers, 6 Who Can Make Treaties? The European Union

This chapter examines the EU’s robust and complex treaty-making. The first section deals with the EU’s treaty-making capacity from the perspective of EU law, and then of international treaty practice. It examines the ways in which international treaty-making practice has accommodated EU participation in bilateral and in multilateral agreements. The second section discusses the legal effects of treaties concluded by the EU, first as regards the EU legal order, including their enforcement and interpretation by the Court of Justice of the European Union and the legal effects of mixed agreements. A discussion of the impact of EU treaty-making on the powers of the Member States follows: through the doctrines of exclusivity and pre-emption, the impact of EU law on treaties concluded by the Member States, and finally EU treaty-making from the perspective of international responsibility.