Klabbers, Jan --- "Volkerrechtsfreundlich? International law and the Union legal order" [2011] ELECD 222; in Koutrakos, Panos (ed), "European Foreign Policy" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: European Foreign Policy

Editor(s): Koutrakos, Panos

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849804097

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Volkerrechtsfreundlich? International law and the Union legal order

Author(s): Klabbers, Jan

Number of pages: 20

Extract:

3. Völkerrechtsfreundlich? International
law and the Union legal order
Jan Klabbers

INTRODUCTION
The relationship between the European Union and public international law is
often depicted as one of friendliness and openness. The EU, so the story goes,
is völkerrechtsfreundlich, as the Germans put it, for the obvious reason that it
is itself a creature of international law.1 After all, why bite the hand that feeds
you, or commit patricide? At worst, so the standard narrative continues, the
EU may need some shielding for a while, until such time as it has grown up
and can hold its own. International law is the parent, the EU is its offspring,
and they can and do co-exist and cooperate in great harmony. They truly form
a happy family.2
The story of the EU and international law as a happy family is a seductive
story, but it does have a few holes in its plot.3 For one thing, it carries the
implied promise that sooner or later the EU will be mature and grown up
enough, resilient enough, or immune enough to stand on its own two feet ­ it
will have survived its infant diseases and no longer need special protection.
That is a seductive promise, but so far it has failed to materialize. The EU is
now (whether one starts counting in 1952 or 1958) more than half a century
old. Quite a few institutions have never reached that age: the EU, to make an
obvious point, ...