Beyond the Control Paradigm? International Responsibility and the European Union

Abstract

From the perspective of public international law, the legal personality of the European Union (EU) carries with it the possibility for it to exercise rights and to bear obligations on the international plane. Its quasi-federal structure, however, requires consideration as to how these rights and obligations may be exercised. In this chapter, two regimes are compared: the EU’s rights and obligations as an international organisation and the possibility that its internal structures might be recognised on the international plane, thus leading to more complex notions of subsidiary responsibility, shared between the various levels of European governance. LEGAL PERSONALITY MAY be primarily a technical question, but in the case of the EU, it represents a claim to a coherent identity on the international plane; with respect to third states, it represents a willingness to assume responsibility. Within public international law, the accommodation of the EU’s desire (and purpose, as expressed in the treaties) to act collectively has raised interesting questions with respect to the EU’s external legal personality and the accommodation of this desire within the international legal order.