CYIL 2012

EUROPEAN ATOMIC ENERGY COMMUNITY AND THE NUCLEAR THIRD PARTY LIABILITY above is correct. And consequently, from this interpretation the treaty-making power of the Community will also depend on the field of liability for nuclear damages. 2.3 Euratom as a prospective contracting party to the Amended Paris Convention Another aspect of the problem deserves discussion at this point: we must also deal with the question of whether the provisions of the Amended Paris Convention enable Euratom to accede to it. On one hand, the Euratom Treaty stipulates, in its Article 184, that the Community has legal personality and, consequently, is subject to international law. 31 On the other hand, the wording of the Amended Paris Convention needs to be examined in order to identify possibilities of Euratom´s accession. 2.3.1 Eligibility of supra-national organizations to accede to the Amended Paris Convention However, the wording of the Amended Paris Convention (and the wording of the Convention in its original version as well) provides in Article 21 that: “The Government of any Member or Associate country of the Organisation (for Economic Co-operation and Development – added by the author) which is not a Signatory to this Convention may accede thereto by notification addressed to the Secretary-General of the Organisation. The Government of any other country which is not a Signatory to this Convention may accede thereto by notification addressed to the Secretary-General of the Organisation and with the unanimous assent of the Contracting Parties. Such accession shall take effect from the date of such assent.” As Euratom is obviously not a “ country ” in the sense of international law, we must wonder under what circumstances Euratom will be eligible to join this treaty. The answer is found within the wording of numerous international treaties, inter alia the Convention on Nuclear Safety of 1994. The provisions of this treaty expressly provide the possibility of Euratom accession. 32 A contrario, it might be argued that, if an international treaty does not contain such a provision enabling accession for supra national entities such as Euratom or the European Union, these entities are not eligible to join the treaty. 33 This is currently the case of the Amended Paris Convention, as well as all other existing nuclear liability treaties. Consequently, it seems the only way to enable the Community to join the Amended Paris Convention would be changing the wording of this treaty appropriately. 31 Hahn, H. (1958) ‘Euratom: The Conception of an International Personality’, 71 Harward Law Review 6, p. 1001 et seqq. 32 See Article 18 (4) of the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials and Article 30 (4) of the Convention on Nuclear Safety. 33 See Herrmann, C. (2003) ‘Rechtsprobleme der parallelen Mitgliedschaft von Völkerrechtssubjekten in Internationalen Organisationen (Eine Untersuchung am Beispiel der Mitgliedschaft der EG und ihrer Mitgliedstaaten in der WTO)’, in G. Bauschke (ed.): Pluralität des Rechts – Regulierung im Spannungsfeld der Rechtsebenen , p. 139 et seqq.

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