The EUs contribution to the consolidation and development of international norms at the ILCPhD student: Mrs T.M. Vieira da Silva Cabrita
Promotors: C. Eckes, Dr C.M. Brölmann
Duration: 1/9/2017 - 31/8/2021
Abstract:
In his recent article on the International Law Commissions (ILC) set of conclusions on the identification of customary international law, Neils Blokker notes that the Commission is still not taking international organizations (IOs) seriously. The same level of dissatisfaction has been expressed by commentators regarding the Commissions work on other topics, including those specifically addressed to IOs, such as its articles on the responsibility of international organizations (ARIO) or on treaties celebrated between States and IOs (VCLT-IO). Little attention has been paid, however, to the weight accorded by the Commission to the practice of a difficult-to-place entity, the European Union (EI), and the role the EU has played in this UN bodys work of codification and development of international norms. That EU and international law often talk past each other is by now a truism. However, how and why this happens and the perils of this miscommunication for the development of international law, on the one hand, and for the fulfillment of the EUs goals as an international actor, on the other, remain largely under-explored. This research proposes to address this issue by systematically mapping out each interaction between the ILC and the EU in the seventy years of the Commissions operation and fleshing out the tensions between each institutions discourse concerning the relationship between the EU and international law. The aim of the research is thus to answer two main research questions: How has the European Union (EU) interacted overtime with the International Law Commission (ILC)? And to what extent have the EUs views and practice influenced the codification and development of international norms by the ILC?