AETR Judgment and EEC International Competence

Extract

[...] It no longer seeks only in the sectoral articles the foundations of the Community's action, but in the global structure of the treaty. The reasoning is therefore built around the idea that if the Community is a legal person, it cannot be reduced to a simple executive agent. This analysis also highlights the Court's method of reasoning. It does not stop at a literal interpretation of the texts, but is concerned with their overall logic. It remains to examine how this legal autonomy finds its limits in the very objectives of the treaty. [...]

[...] The judgment builds a general theory of the Community's international competence. The starting point of this reasoning is, for the Court, the recognition of the legal personality of the Community, provided for in Article 210 of the EEC Treaty. The author specifies that this article constitutes the reflection of the 'general system of Community law relating to relations with third States'. He also emphasizes the scope of this recognition, as thanks to the legal personality, the Community can be considered a genuine subject of international law, capable of concluding agreements, entering into relations with third States and acting autonomously on the international scene. [...]

[...] Through this analysis, we can see the desire for a strong legal order that would be able to protect itself against institutional inconsistencies. The author specifies that the Court refuses to consider the absence of text as an obstacle to the action of the Community. This solution will be confirmed six years after the AETR judgment, by Opinion 1/76 (ECJ 26 April 1977), in which the Court recognizes an external competence even in the absence of a prior internal act, when the international agreement is necessary to achieve the objectives of the treaty. [...]

[...] This idea is at the heart of the reasoning developed in the text, as it asserts that the Community cannot limit itself to producing norms while leaving the Member States to act freely outside, risking creating a contradiction between the two legal orders. The author reports that for the Commission, the negotiation of the AETR agreement should have been the exclusive responsibility of the Community, since the concerned domain was already covered by a Community regulation 'the negotiation and conclusion of the A.E.T.R. could only be carried out by the Community' because it was a sector 'governed by Community law'. The author emphasizes here the direct link between internal and external competence. [...]

[...] The author then organizes his reasoning around the opposition regarding the international competence of the EEC. On one side, he presents the thesis defended by the Commission, which is favorable to a dynamic interpretation of the founding treaty. On the other, he exposes the vision of the Council, which is more traditional. The scholar thus highlights that the Court had to choose 'on the one hand, a broad and evolving conception of the competence to conclude agreements, on the other the traditional thesis of the express attribution of such competence'. [...]