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Common Commercial Policy: The Expanding Competence of the European Union in the Area of International Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Dorota Leczykiewicz

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The European Union (EU) acts in the area of international trade through the community's commercial policy regulated by the European Community (EC) Treaty. The position of the Union in external trade relations is dependant on the unique legal character of this entity. By developing a legal order which is supreme to the law of its Member States, and creating a complex system of institutions and modes of decision-making, the Community has ceased to be a mere representative of the countries it comprises. The increasing transfer of competences from the Member States onto the community allowed it to aim at the realization of common objectives as opposed to merely collective ones. As a result, tensions between the EC and dissatisfied Member States occur and the delineation of competences may turn out to be crucial when interests of an individual Member State are involved. Therefore, the paper which considers the situation of the “new” European Union in the area of international trade, in light of the Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe (Constitutional Treaty), should necessarily investigate how the position of the EU will be strengthened vis-à-vis its Member States.

Information

Type
Part III: Sectoral Differentiation in the Constitution
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 6 , Issue 11: The Unity of the European Constitution: 2nd German-Polish Seminar on the Constitutional Law of the European Union , 01 November 2005 , pp. 1673 - 1685
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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