The relationship between the European Union and other international organisations has not always been easy, due to the peculiar nature of the EU. The below commentary provides analysis of the EU's relationship with the United Nations, addresses problems that can arise where the EU is implementing Member States' obligations, and discusses the consequences of recent rulings in the European Court of First Instance.
Ms. Eckes writes: The fundamental preliminary question arising in the context of the new multi-layered multilateralism is whether European law should be treated as international or domestic law because it has created its own autonomous system of rules. From the standpoint of international law, the EU is an international organisation whose rights and obligations are determined under international law. Within the UN, for instance, the EU Member States are liable for any infringements of the UN Charter, whether the infringement is committed by their national institutions or by the Community. Consequently, from the standpoint of international law, European law remains public international law. Possible conflicts between European law and (other) public international law would have to be solved pursuant to the traditional laws governing conflicts between different rules of international law.
From the standpoint of European law on the other hand, the Community is an autonomous legal system. The Member States have transferred sovereign rights to an institutional framework, which acts autonomously from the Member States. They have submitted their national legal orders to the rules of European law, accepted its supremacy and its capacity directly to change the national legal order through direct applicability and direct effect. However, they have opened their national legal orders to European law only. They did not intend to lift all boundaries between their internal national legal orders and the external legal sphere.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) views European law as a “new legal order” distinct from international law. This has been its position ever since it issued the first revolutionizing rulings in the cases of van Gend and Costa v. ENEL. Indeed, in the MOX Plant case, the ECJ recently confirmed: “an international agreement cannot affect the allocation of responsibilities defined in the Treaties and, consequently, the autonomy of the Community legal system, compliance with which the Court ensures under Article 220 EC.” The Court left no doubt that the Community legal order should be immune from interferences resulting from the external activities of the Community and the Member States. Hence, from the perspective of European law, the European legal order is autonomous from international law and must be considered domestic law for determining the internal status of international law. [footnotes omitted]