Abstract
The French campaign for the referendum on the European Constitution has perfectly shown the fear of a loss of state sovereignty due to the European Union within the political elite as well as within the society. With the increase of international organisations, that can be defined as "a formal, continuous structure established by agreement between members (governmental and/or non-governmental) from two or more sovereign states with the aim of pursuing the common interest of the membership" (Archer, 2001:33), the question of a loss of state sovereignty becomes recurrent. This question is an important one for, since the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, states are defined by their sovereignty. In fact, a modern state is characterised by the supremacy of a government "on the people, the resources and, ultimately, all other authorities within the territory it controlled" (Axtmann and Grant, 1999:32). So we must ask if the belonging to an international organisation imply a sacrifice of this supremacy, a sacrifice of state sovereignty. In a first part, using the example of the European Union, we will see that actually the creation of an international organisation implies in some extent a sacrifice of sovereignty, but secondly we will see that a more precise definition of "sovereignty" entails to qualify this statement.
