Sanderijn Duquet

The EU and International Diplomatic Law: New Horizons?

[Summary The European Union has a unique sui generis status on the international plane, which is reflected in its capability to enter into diplomatic relations with third states and international organizations. Over nearly six decades, the European Union (EU) has gradually built its own worldwide bilateral and multilateral diplomatic network, which is made subject — through specific agreements with the host country — to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The ‘Union delegations’ are now operating as the diplomatic missions of the EU as a whole, in contrast to the former Commission delegations. This article examines the relationship between the EU and international diplomatic law. How does the EU establish and conduct diplomatic relations? What legal instruments are being used? How do the Vienna Convention and customary diplomatic law come into play? What is the exact legal status of EU ambassadors and diplomatic staff? By critically analysing these issues, this article assesses the specific contribution the EU makes to the further development of international diplomatic law., SummaryThe European Union has a unique sui generis status on the international plane, which is reflected in its capability to enter into diplomatic relations with third states and international organizations. Over nearly six decades, the European Union (EU) has gradually built its own worldwide bilateral and multilateral diplomatic network, which is made subject — through specific agreements with the host country — to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The ‘Union delegations’ are now operating as the diplomatic missions of the EU as a whole, in contrast to the former Commission delegations. This article examines the relationship between the EU and international diplomatic law. How does the EU establish and conduct diplomatic relations? What legal instruments are being used? How do the Vienna Convention and customary diplomatic law come into play? What is the exact legal status of EU ambassadors and diplomatic staff? By critically analysing these issues, this article assesses the specific contribution the EU makes to the further development of international diplomatic law.]

Upholding the rule of law in informal international lawmaking processes

AbstractNew, alternative, forms of cross-border cooperation, in particular processes of informal international lawmaking (‘IN-LAW’), have emerged and gained prominence since the 2000s in response to an increasingly diverse, networked, and knowledge-based society. This transformation impacts on traditional notions of public international law as well as on the conceptualization of an emerging international rule of law. This is all the more the case given the tendency to emphasise the formal characteristics of the latter. The present article, nevertheless, challenges the assumption that informal international law is, because of its informal nature, by definition incompatible with a rule of law approach. The article thereto reintroduces a negative (shielding society from arbitrariness) and a positive (providing requirements for lawmaking) conception of the rule of law. First, it identifies actors and processes of informal international lawmaking and elucidates the extent of their reliance on legal principles as opposed to the wielding of arbitrary power on the international plane. Second, it operationalises a rule of law approach in the three phases of informal lawmaking processes (lawmaking per se, law-application and accountability). As such, it discusses how a number of concrete rule of law requirements related to participation, procedural guarantees, accessibility of norms, and accountability mechanisms are implemented. To conclude, it is submitted that rule of law theories can be reconciled with IN-LAW, without affecting the flexibility that is fundamental to the non-traditional norms produced at the global level.

Bound or Unbridled? A Legal Perspective on the Diplomatic Functions of European Union Delegations

When serving abroad, diplomats must abide by both the diplomatic functions detailed in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the Convention’s general obligations. This applies, too, to the European Union’s missions (Union delegations), which execute diplomatic functions for the EU in third countries. These diplomatic activities are more severely constrained than for individual member states by the limits set by EU law in terms of the horizontal and vertical division of competences. This article demonstrates how Union delegations fulfil nearly all traditional diplomatic tasks outlined in the Vienna Convention, while going beyond the traditional conception of diplomatic functions in terms of human rights protection, the execution of administrative programmes, and the management of coordination/cooperation modes with EU member state missions on the ground. Ultimately, the article argues that Union delegations are able to meet the demands of modern diplomatic interchange and may have inadvertently altered diplomatic functions altogether.