Lisbon bestows legal entity status on the EU for the first time

Stabshauptmann

After Lisbon, Article 47 of the Treaty on European Union will give the EU legal status.

The No side are claiming that this is new, has never been done before, and is the backbone of their federalist argument.

My understanding is that there is some treaty somewhere that gives legal status to the EEC and this is just an update; but I cant find any such reference to legal status before.

Can anyone offer some clarity?

ei.sdraob

happy to help, check this post

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=61994111&postcount=23

Scofflaw wrote: »

The European Union was established by the Treaty of Maastricht. Fact. This is Article 1 of the Treaty on the European Union as it stands now:



The current EC is part of the current EU. Fact. The current EC has legal personality. Fact. As part of the reforms in Lisbon the EC and the rest of the 'pillar' structure is being dissolved. Fact. The EU thereby gains the legal personality that the EC had. Fact.

At no point in that does anything become a superstate. Legal personality is a legal fiction that allows the EC to sign up to international treaties, and otherwise gives it necessary standing under law. The transfer of that legal personality to the EU does nothing new, because the EU already signs up to international treaties by using the EC, which is a constituent part of the EU.

regards,
Scofflaw

Stabshauptmann

Thanks, but where did the legal status of the EC come from? Like, where in what treaty is it

Hitman Actual

Stabshauptmann wrote: »

My understanding is that there is some treaty somewhere that gives legal status to the EEC and this is just an update; but I cant find any such reference to legal status before.

The economic 'pillar' of the EU (i.e. the EEC) already has legal status, as you allude to. This means that the EU can enter into international agreements with an economic emphasis; the best known example would be the WTO (where every country still has a veto). Lisbon extends the legal nature of the EU to Justice and Defence areas.

PopeBuckfastXVI

Straight from the horses mouth

The two Communities (European Community and Euratom) making up the European Union each have legal personality

The European Community has the power to conclude and negotiate agreements in line with its external powers, to become a member of an international organisation and to have delegations in non-member countries.

http://europa.eu/scadplus/glossary/union_legal_personality_en.htm

marco_polo

Stabshauptmann wrote: »

After Lisbon, Article 47 of the Treaty on European Union will give the EU legal status.

The No side are claiming that this is new, has never been done before, and is the backbone of their federalist argument.

My understanding is that there is some treaty somewhere that gives legal status to the EEC and this is just an update; but I cant find any such reference to legal status before.

Can anyone offer some clarity?

The short answer is that the EU is absorbing the legal personality of the EC (The First Pilliar) and a number of implicit legal personalities from the other pillliars (Common Foreign policies etc).

This explains the current legal situation nicely.

http://www.irri-kiib.be/papers/07/eu/Legal.Personality.EU-PDS-SA.pdf

The working group chaired by Giuliano Amato during the Convention proposed by far the best solution, namely the formal recognition of the international legal personality of the Union and the absorption by the Union of the legal personality of the European Community. This translated into articles I-7 and IV-438 of the Constitutional Treaty. It is very much to be hoped that those clauses will survive in whatever institutional solution is elaborated to solve the present constitutional impasse.

If we accept, as we think we all must, that the European Union has, today, an implicit legal personality when acting in fields of its competence, formal recognition of that fact should not prove impossible to achieve. We would not be creating a new legal situation, but simply recognising an existing one.

edanto

Well folks, that's all well and good, but how can we trust all those links?

On the Coir site, it tells us that

"1. The Lisbon Treaty, in Articles 1 and 47, would create a new EU state for the first time. This is a fundamental change to what previously existed. We would all then be made citizens of this new EU state by Article 9."

That sounds terrible to me and I would trust Coir just because of their nice heart shaped posters. Shame on you all for saying that they might be scaremongering.

K-9

edanto wrote: »

Well folks, that's all well and good, but how can we trust all those links?

On the Coir site, it tells us that

"1. The Lisbon Treaty, in Articles 1 and 47, would create a new EU state for the first time. This is a fundamental change to what previously existed. We would all then be made citizens of this new EU state by Article 9."

That sounds terrible to me and I would trust Coir just because of their nice heart shaped posters. Shame on you all for saying that they might be scaremongering.

In fairness, this one seems to do the rounds on the various ANti Lisbon/EU sites. It seems to be a copy and paste job.