Legal personality
The capacity to act as a legal person or distinct corporate entity with power to act , -including in the case of a State the power to make laws and conduct domestic and foreign policy and conclude private, public og international agreements - is referred to as legal personality. As the 1992 Treaty on European Union does contain any provisions on the Union's legal personality, the European Union does not have that, although the European Community has. Therefore, up to now, for example economic agreements could be concluded by the Community whereas political agreements under foreign policy and crime, justice and home affairs had to be concluded by the Member States.
The future
According to the Lisbon Treaty the entire Union will have legal personality. International treaties signed by the Union will be binding and will have primacy over national laws. Most agreements can be concluded by qualified majority vote. This will make the EU an independent international body, comparable in many ways to a State. From the inside the Union would look like an arrangement between states whereas from the outside it would look quite like a state itself.
Links
- The European Convention "A Single Legal Personality for the European Union http://european-convention.eu.int/docs/meetings/2-EN.pdf
- European Convention: Final report of Working Group on Legal Personality http://register.consilium.euro......eu/pdf/en/02/cv00/00305en2.pdf
