Abstrakt
The European Union currently possesses exclusive competence as concerns acceding to international treaties which govern matters of jurisdiction and judicial co-operation. Consequently, the European Union is competent to sign, or ratify all international treaties governing these treaties.
However, there is a problem in relation to those international conventions that do not allow accession of the European Union, which is the case with all existing international nuclear liability conventions. The way the Union copes with the situation is that it authorizes Member States to accede to an international convention by a special decision.
This paper deals with the Union's relation to the Protocol of 1997 to Amend the Vienna Convention on Nuclear Liability of 1963, in particular with regard to an authorization concerning the “new” Member States, which are Contracting Parties to the Vienna Convention (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania).