EU Responsibility in the International System: Setting the Stage

The first seminar of the Jean Monnet Project ?EU Responsibility in the International System (EURIS)? will concentrate on an introduction to the topic of EU liability/responsibility from the perspective of international and EU law. There will be three broad themes that will revolve around (1) the ILC Draft Articles on the international responsibility of States (2001) and international organizations (2011) (evolution of drafts, choices made, omissions, critique with an emphasis to the criticism articulated by the EU to the ARIO); (2) the EU (and EU law) choices and stance with regard to its responsibility/liability (internal dimension and mechanisms, contractual and extra-contractual liability of the EU, EU perceptions on its responsibility in the international realm ? vis-a-vis third actors ? and choices made); (3) cases where multiple actors are involved in the commission of an internationally wrongful act with an emphasis on shared responsibility and its usefulness for developing a consistent approach to EU and EU MS responsibility (models of shared responsibility, complicity, consequences of the commission of an international wrongful act in a shared responsibility scenario etc.)
The purpose of the seminar is to highlight the points of convergence and divergence between the general rules on the responsibility of IOs and the special practices followed by the EU, as well as to underline those crucial parameters that bring together the two models (linking the EU legal order to the international one), such as the lex specialis principle, the reference to the internal rules of an IO with an emphasis on the relevant Union rules, the practice of mixed agreements and the responsibility allocation patterns that can be discerned.