International organisations and sovereignty

Résumé du document

The French campaign for the referendum on the European Constitution has perfectly shown the fear of a loss of state sovereignty due to the European Union within the political elite as well as within the society. With the increase of international organisations, that can be defined as "a formal, continuous structure established by agreement between members (governmental and/or non-governmental) from two or more sovereign states with the aim of pursuing the common interest of the membership" (Archer, 2001:33), the question of a loss of state sovereignty becomes recurrent. This question is an important one for, since the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, states are defined by their sovereignty. In fact, a modern state is characterised by the supremacy of a government "on the people, the resources and, ultimately, all other authorities within the territory it controlled" (Axtmann and Grant, 1999:32). So we must ask if the belonging to an international organisation imply a sacrifice of this supremacy, a sacrifice of state sovereignty. In a first part, using the example of the European Union, we will see that actually the creation of an international organisation implies in some extent a sacrifice of sovereignty, but secondly we will see that a more precise definition of "sovereignty" entails to qualify this statement.

Extraits

[...] International organisations and sovereignty Does the creation of an international organisation necessarily imply the sacrifice of sovereignty ? Discuss with reference to the European Union The French campaign for the referendum on the European Constitution has perfectly shown the fear of a loss of state sovereignty due to the European Union within the political elite as well as within the society. With the increase of international organisations, that can be defined as formal, continuous structure established by agreement between members (governmental and/or non-governmental) from two or more sovereign states with the aim of pursuing the common interest of the membership” (Archer, 2001:33), the question of a loss of state sovereignty becomes recurrent. [...]

[...] Consequently member states have no longer free hand for making rules and sovereignty defined as jurisdictional independence becomes highly relative. Yet we can note as Alan James does that jurisdictional sovereignty even without international organisation is a bit relative since states belong to the international community and thus are bound by international law. We can analyse a second way of understanding the term sovereignty as political independence. Alan James defines it as the ability for a state to “successfully look after itself, chart and follow its own independent course on the turbulent waters of international life. [...]

[...] In that extent, they lose a part of their political sovereignty. But on the other hand, the decision of taking part in the EU (or of the European Community) was the result for most of the states of the observation of their loss of power on the international stage after the Second World War and face to the increasing power of the US and the USSR. So belonging to the EU is a way of having weight on the international scene and thus of having in some extent a bigger political sovereignty. [...]

[...] First, we must underline the fact that international organisations are created by sovereign states and remain their creatures. “Organisations do not have independent lives of their own; they do not have independent sources of finance; they do not have independent armed forces. All they have come from or is loaned to them by states. Consequently, organisations are unable, as it were, to devour their creators, and therefore present no threat at all to states'constitutional independence, and hence their sovereignty.” (James, 1999:20) However, we may qualify this statement as far as the European Union is concerned. [...]

[...] Like the other international organisations, the European Union was created by states, depends of these states, which can withdraw from the Union. But the European Union has some very special features compared with others international organisations which make its case unique. In fact, since the first ideas of a creation of a European community, there has been an inclination of some of the European elite of going toward a federal Europe which would replace the existing system of states which failed to prevent wars, economic depression . [...]