The Eu's Legal Personality And Its Impact On Global Governance

After World War I, with the emergence of the League of Nations, the InternationalLabor Organization and other important universal organizations, international organizationhas increasingly played an important role in the international community. After World WarII, the establishment of the United Nations marked a new phrase of internationalorganization development. Meanwhile, with the advance of European integration thoughts,from the initial European Coal and Steel Community, the European Atomic EnergyCommunity and the European Economic Community, the European Community, to theestablishment of the European Union, the European Union (EU), as a regional internationalorganization, has made a rapid development. Its study is also deepening. The authorinnovatively combines the methods of international law and international politics, on theone side, sorts out relevant studies on the legal personality of international organizationand development route of EU’s legal personality from international law perspective; on theother side, discusses the internal and external relations of the EU through case study fromthe perspective of global governance and international politics. The author hopes toprovide new ideas for the development of China-EU relations through literatureinterpretation and case study.This thesis is divided into four chapters:Chapter One discusses the legal personality of international organization. Acomprehensive study has made, combines with its history, on the development process ofthe legal personality of international organization. Then, the author adapts three famousdoctrines in the international law, which is contract theory, implicit personality theory andobjective personality theory, to discuss their analysis on the sources and relative merits ofthe legal personality of international organization, respectively. Meanwhile, the chapteralso associates the International Court’s judicial practice on the legal personality ofinternational organization to lay the theoretical foundation of this thesis, which is based onthe contract theory and combines the rational factors of other theories.Chapter Two sorts out the development process of the legal personality of the EU. Thechapter considers all the treaties after the establishment of the EU as models for research, including the "Maastricht Treaty","Amsterdam Treaty","Nice Treaty","EU constitution","Lisbon Treaty" and others. From the international law perspective, the chapter studies thecontext of the treaties through text analysis method, explores the development process ofthe legal personality of the EU through comparative analysis method and also discussesissues like the implicit legal personality and explicit legal personality, single legalpersonality and multiple legal personalities.Chapter Three analyzes the EU’s legal personality and its new development andlimitations on the related issues in the "Lisbon Treaty". The "Lisbon Treaty" officiallyregulated that the EU replaced the European Community, abolished EU’s three pillarsstructure and EU’s participation in the international affairs as a single legal personality.Meanwhile, it also increased the flexibility and breadth of EU’s contracting rights,regulated the external representation of President of the Council of Europe and the HighRepresentative for Common Foreign and Security Policy. The various measures help insome extent to strengthen EU’s power in the world arena and have an impact on itsparticipation in global governance. However, the thesis also analyzes the great divergenceinside the EU on EU’s single legal personality, its consequences and the ultimate goal offuture development. All these factors lead to the limitations and weaknesses of the "LisbonTreaty".Chapter Four studies the recognition the EU’s legal personality and its impact on EU’sglobal governance. The thesis proceeds into case study, discusses the internal influence of"Lisbon Treaty" on the EU and its member countries through Syria crisis; discusses theexternal influence of "Lisbon Treaty" on EU-America relations through environment issuesand EU’s relation with the NATO through strategy security view. Meanwhile, the thesis hasa comprehensive analysis of the foreseeable problems in the China-EU relations, especiallyon the human rights issue. The author considers that while focuses on EU’s whole, unifiedforeign policy, China should place extra emphasis on the relations with leading EUcountries like Germany and France and develop relationship with small EU countries at arelative low cost.