Why and to what extent a common interpretative position for mixed agreements?

Abstract:

The phenomenon of mixed agreements has become the main feature of external relations of the Community legal order and it also is to become the main feature of external relations of the European legal order. With regard to this phenomenon the paper examines whether, to what extent and why a common interpretative position is followed by the ECJ for provisions of mixed agreements so as to shed light on the characteristics of the existence and exercise of competences of both the Community and the Member States in the external sphere in the light of case law to better understand a true structure of the Community legal order. The paper has two main arguments. Firstly, the paper asserts that neither the existence nor the exercise of external competences of the Community could be confined to its exclusive external competences, since the Community also nonexclusively exercises its external competences. Secondly, given that competences are demarcated within the Community legal order in an objective-oriented way in furtherance of the Treaty objectives, the shared and complementary characteristics of the national competences signify the incorporation of shared national competences into this legal in order to be exercised within the Community framework. It no longer is possible, upon the European constitutionalization process, to describe national competences as merely one type.