The International Responsibility of the European Union: a Critique of the International Law Commission's Articles on the Responsibility of International Organisations.

Responsibility plays a core role in international law; it is the very measure of its effectiveness. Responsibility began as a law of state responsibility and this has continued to limit the law. As the international arena has expanded to encompass a broader range of actors, in particular the growth of international organisations and the European Union, there has been an increased need for the expansion of the law of responsibility to address the growing actions and competencies of these actors. The International Law Commission (ILC) has sought to address this through developing the Articles on the Responsibility of International Organisations (ARIO). This study concerns itself with limitations of the approach taken by the ILC towards the ARIO and critiques the ability of the ARIO to apply to the growing actions of the European Union. The original basis of responsibility in a system of international law based around state cooperation has limited the foundations of responsibility to an idea of international action as bilateral cooperation. This has shaped the basis of responsibility into a principle that seeks to address individual, unified actors and, consequently, struggles when faced with the European Union, an actor that finds interaction and interdependence at the core of its international identity. The thesis considers the nature of the EU as an international actor to understand the challenge posed by this unique actor. It then moves on to consider the work of the ILC and provides an analysis of two main areas: the principle of attribution, which was heavily derived from the principles on state responsibility and the attempt to address the strong dependence on this prior work on responsibility through the use of references to the rules of the organisation and the attempt to develop a lex specialis article. The thesis then seeks to propose an alternative framework of responsibility that would scale back the law in this area and enable it to develop more organically.