MIXED AGREEMENTS REVISITED: THE EU AND ITS MEMBER STATES IN THE WORLD. Ed by Christophe Hillion and Panos Koutrakos Oxford: Hart Publishing
| Published date | 01 May 2011 |
| Author | Julia Schmidt |
| Pages | 336-337 |
| Date | 01 May 2011 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2011.0051 |
The Treaty of Lisbon introduces some profound changes with regard to the EU's external relations and emphasises the role of the European Union as an international actor. Although mixed agreements are one of the most important instruments used by the European Union to organise and carry out its relations with international organisation and third states, the Treaty of Lisbon remains silent on this issue. Coming nearly thirty years after the publication of David O'Keeffe and Henry G Schermers (eds),
As a corollary of the limited scope of the EU's competence, mixed agreements in a classical sense are signed and concluded by the European Union and its member states and another party when parts of the agreements fall within the EU's competence but other parts do not. Their advantage is the overcoming of the division of competences, but this creates a variety of legal and practical challenges. One of them relates to the management of mixity between the member states and the European Union, one of the recurring themes of this volume. Analysing the case law of the European Court of Justice, Christophe Hillion discusses the changing views on the function of the duty of cooperation between the member states and the EU away from the requirement of unity in the international representation of the EU towards the more dynamic concept of ensuring coherence and consistency of the Union's external action. In “Mixity and Coherence in EU External Relations” (ch 5), he argues that the specific duty of cooperation stemming from the general principle of loyal cooperation would not only include procedural obligations of consultation and information and an obligation of conduct, but could also involve an obligation of result. The importance of the duty of cooperation is furthermore visualised by Joni Heliskoski (ch 7) who points out that rules and principles regarding the implementation of mixed agreements are developed rather incrementally by the Court of Justice, a topic that is also scrutinised by Panos Koutrakos (ch 6).
Addressing the phenomenon of so called new- or cross-pillar mixity, Ramses A Wessel examines agreements concluded by the European Union with a legal basis in two distinct Union pillars before the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty (ch 3). In line with...
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