POLS PhD student Ieva Vezbergaite's conference participation

Political Science PhD student Ieva Vezbergaite attended ‘Eighth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences’ organized by the Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences in Prague on 30 July – 1 August, 2013

Ieva Vezbergaite presented a paper entitled “The European Fiscal Compact: The Instrumentality of International Law and its Effects on EU Integration” at the conference.

Click the link below for the conference program:

http://thesocialsciences.com/_uploads/I13_Full_Program_7-22.pdf

The European Fiscal Compact: The Instrumentality of International Law and its Effects on EU Integration

With the sovereign debt crisis raging in the Eurozone, the whole notion of EU integration is being confronted with scenarios of disintegration. In attempt to overcome the UK veto and limitations of EU legal framework, the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the EMU (the Fiscal Compact) was negotiated as international treaty and therefore is not part of EU law. Yet this international treaty profoundly affects EU integration process by creating a new common fiscal regime in the EU. The new competence of EU institutions and the new fiscal framework may suggest that the treaty equals to a status of EU constitutional law. In the paper we examine how the Fiscal Compact, as an external international treaty, affects EU integration. We analyze the legal status of the Fiscal Compact, the Compact’s relationship with the EU law, its implications to EU constitutionalism and impact on member states. We submit that international law can be instrumental in strengthening EU integration even though international treaties concluded outside of EU legal framework distort EU constitutional order, in particular by bypassing the “game rules” for EU reforms set out in EU primary law.