Special Agreement Problems

We believe that there are even stronger reasons to reject this alternative. Above all, it doesn`t seem to describe what`s really going on. Indeed, the conclusion of the AOG is to obtain some political recognition on the part of states in matters of international law, or to express their intention to comply with these specific rules and to probably wait for others to do the same. The creation of a new regime, separate from international law, could be seen as a contradiction to this effect, since the concept of lex armatorum appears to be subject to a derogation from state participation and focuses on agreements between AOGs. The consideration of these agreements in the context of a lex armatorum could also be inconsistent, as their content – far from justifying states or AOGs trying to create a new legal order – generally refers to the existing rules of international law. Therefore, in the above situation, a common and multiple liability must be the appropriate solution.97 The complainant may choose to sue the persons responsible together or one of them for the full amount of the damage. This is, of course, particularly difficult for the members of the European Community, who, at the present stage of practice, have no chance of forcing the EC, through judicial proceedings before the Court of Justice, to bring the actions of their bodies into line with WTO rules. However, as has already been explained above, the responsibility of EC members for actions they cannot control stems from the free choice of members to assume such a risk if they have accepted the WTO agreement. They voluntarily made commitments that they could only fulfil through organs they could not control. In the event of a problem, this risk cannot be carried over to the injured third party. Indeed, throughout the Uruguay Round negotiation process, the EC had argued that the WTO agreement was a “one undertaking”, i.e.

a single indivisible treaty. See Bourgeois, “EC to WTO and Opinion 1/94: A Procession of Echternach,” 32 Common Market Law Review (1995) 763 s.); especially at 785. The fact that the Commission, on behalf of the EC, finally approved the agreement “with regard to this part”. The Committee on Industry, Information and Research, Research and Research. [1994] L 336/1.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.