УЖЕ И ШИРЕ ДЕЈСТВО МЕЂУНАРОДНИХ УГОВОРА У ПРАВУ ЕУ
ANALYSING THE NARROW AND THE BROADER MEANING OF THE DIRECT EFFECT OF INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS IN EU LAW

Summary/Abstract: One of the essential issues in any internal legal order is to determine the scope and intensity of the effect of confirmed international treaties. In this respect, the solutions of the EU legal order should be analzysed and the effects of international agreements should be classified by using methods of content analysis in combination with the evolving jurisprudence of EU courts. Despite the initial impression of a friendly, monistic attitude of the Court of Justice towards the general international law, based on the premise of giving direct effect in the narrower sense to individual provisions of international treaties, the situation has dramatically changed. For several decades, the Court of Justice recognized the direct effect of provisions of international agreements of an economic nature. However, today, due to the increasing expansion of EU Law to other fields, the number of international agreements that do not have direct effect is increasing. Bearing in mind this “guard” of the Court of Justice, there is a growing number of situations involving essential impermeability of international law norms within EU Law or their formal reception without the possibility of producing an effect internally. Therefore, EU Member States had to review the possibility of referring to international agreements both within EU law (for the purpose of challenging secondary legislation or revision of national regulations, as well as interpretation) and before other international bodies, which ultimately generated a critical analysis and review of the classic doctrine of direct effect of international agreements. Considering that the direct effect has various functions in the internal and (so-called) external law of the EU, itis viewed in two ways: the narrower sense (stricto sensu) and the broader sense (lato sensu). Fora long time, the prevailing view in jurisprudence and academic literature was that direct effect in the narrower sense is a prerequisite for referring to an international agreement within EU law. As a result of the subsequent criticism of this solution, the concept of direct effect has been expanded. Now, it has a different meaning in the context of application of international agreements and approaches the concept of direct applicability.

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