ESIL 2016 Workshop: Stefano Saluzzo, “The obligation of EU Member States to exercise their foreign powers in conformity with EU law”

As mentioned earlier, EUglobal is hosting a workshop in the margins of the ESIL 2016 Conference in Riga. The papers for this workshop are posted here on the Interest Group blog. Today’s paper is written by Stefano Saluzzo, and is entitled “The obligation of EU Member States to exercise their foreign powers in conformity with EU law“. Here is an excerpt:

“In order to understand the potential of EU external action on the development of international law, this paper aims at presenting and analysing a peculiar obligation of Member States, arising from the recent practice and, until know, only fragmentally addressed. It is submitted that, as happened in the past for the exercise of Member States’ internal competences, even in the field of external relations there exists an obligation for Member States to act on the international plane – that is in their relations with third States and international organisations – in conformity with EU law. This means,  of  course,  not  only  to  respect  the  division  of  competences  between  them  and  the  EU institutions, but also to avoid any international action in contrast with already adopted EU legislation and, in some cases, with internal measures still to be adopted. “

Click here to download the paper.