The International Personality of the World Trade Organization - nature and legal consequences  Cover Image
  • Price 4.90 €

Международната правосубектност на Световната търговска организация - същност и правни последици
The International Personality of the World Trade Organization - nature and legal consequences

Author(s): Svilena Ralcheva
Subject(s): Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence
Published by: Институт за държавата и правото - Българска академия на науките

Summary/Abstract: The explicit conferment of legal personality to the World Trade Organization with the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the WTO raises questions concerning its nature and legal consequences. Central to this article is the connotation of the term personality, which the founders of the organization might have envisaged in its constitutive treaty. While the text of Article VIII, para. I of the Marrakesh Agreement may be generally regarded as the manifest legal ground for attribution of legal personality to WTO, unspoken remain neither its international character nor its scope. The analysis finds out that this provision stipulates the international personality of WTO. The possession of the quality international personality by the WTO confirms its being an independent subject of international law with its own identity. On this ground it may be presumed that the will of the organization is different from the will of its member-states. Furthermore, the concept of personality may serve as a precondition for the presence of two other legal qualities - legal capacity and competence of the organization. These qualities are restricted and special by nature and their range should be assessed cautiously on the basis of the objectives, principles and functions expressly set up in the Marrakesh Agreement. The personality, capacity and competence of the WTO in their aggregate qualify the organization as a folly-fledged international subject, either capable of assisting the law-making activity of the member-states or of performing its own independent law-making activity.

  • Issue Year: XLIX/2008
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 69-84
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Bulgarian