Institute of International Economic Law (IIEL)

IEL Links for the European Union
Prepared by Marion Panizzon and J. Michael Taylor

The authors are not responsible for the content, the accuracy or the maintenance of the web pages to which the links listed below lead. The user of this site should use caution, as normally required when utilizing the Internet.

Narrative Summary

This web survey attempts to set out a list of links to other search portals addressing the European Communities along with listing particular sites that address primary and secondary resources concerning the European Communities.

The EC/EU is a regional integration agreement with supranational legal powers that are binding on its Member States. Two features characterize the special nature of this legal system: First, as common in most Regional Trade Agreements (RTA's), it has an external and internal dimension, commonly called "EC external relations law" and "internal market law". Second, the supranationality aspect of the EC system accounts for creating law in specific areas of exclusive EC competencies without requiring the consent of the Members. This is a major distinguishing factor from other RTA's, which usually operate on the consent-based aspects of general public international law.

It is important to identify the areas of EC/EU suprantionality, where the EC has exclusive and (sometimes shared) competencies, from areas of classic intergovernmental cooperation between the Union and its Members. The division of powers (or competencies in EC parlance) between the Union and the Members reaches across all areas of law.

For common commercial policy (as its name suggest), the EC has exclusive competencies. However, in Opinion 1/94 (now consolidated in Art. 133 para. 5 of the Treaty on the European Community, TEC) the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled Security Policy (CFSP), on the other hand, remains an area of intergovernmental cooperation between the EC and its Members (Title V, Arts. 11-28 TEU). Under the process of communitisation, though, more areas of intergovernmental decision-making between the Member States are being progressively transformed into areas of supranational Community power. Thus, it is foreseeable that the areas of shared competencies in trade relations will be under exclusive control of the EC and that external relations law (other than trade law) will one day form supranatonal community law too.

For an overview of the legal structure of the EC/EU, see: http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/cig/g4000c.htm#c12. The following presentation of treaties and instruments of the EC's external dimension, and limitedly, of its internal market, does not attempt to set forth a complete compilation, but represents a selection of the most significant of the EC's external trade instruments. The section on internal market law, as well as on the two intergovernmental pillars of EC law (common foreign and security policy, and justice and home affairs) summarily refers to links, considering that for international economic law, these are less significant.