Paper Titles & Abstracts

This paper will examine the EU withdrawal provisions by situating them in the public international law spectrum ofsuch provisions. It will survey the current state of the art on withdrawal provisions contained in multilateraltreaties establishing international organizations, including the United Nations, the Council of Europe and theEuropean Union. It will exhaustively review the withdrawal practice of states from such organizations. Aftersetting out the broader public international law framework, of which the EU is a sui generis organization, it willscrutinize Article 50 EU not only in relation to general international law, but also in relation to other EU Treatyprovisions. This paper will put forward the argument that withdrawal is a measure of last resort by memberstates, when their expectations are not met by international organizations. Recent discussions of withdrawal,including the EU, have highlighted this issue. This is why the International Law Commission's Draft Articles onthe Responsibility of International Organizations have increasingly garnered support as they offer internationalstandards by which the performance of such organisations can be measured. It will further be argued that theright to withdrawal from an international organization, and especially from the European Union, is not anunfettered one. This paper will set forth the provisions of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties 1969setting strict limitations on the exercise of such a right. In light of these provisions, the right bestowed upon statesby virtue of Article 50 EU is not at the free discretion of member states and requires certain prerequisites to bemet.