Succession of States in respect of Treaties

• Author: Jana Maftei
• Position: Associate Professor, PhD,'Danubius' University of Galati, Romania
• Pages: 355-363

Globalization and Cultural Diversity

355

Succession of States in Respect of Treaties

Jana Maftei

1

Abstract: Although the issue of regulating the succession of states was forcefully expressed especially after

the Second World War, in terms of emergence of new states after the decolonization process, this institution

has not lost its actuality, not even in the early 21st century. The transformations, which occur within the

international society and affecting the sovereignty, generate legal consequences, regarding the succession of

the successor state to the treaties of th e predecessor state. We have an alyzed in this paper the issu e of

succession of states to the international treaties related to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties from

1969 and The Vienna Convention on Succession of States in respect of Treaties from 1978. To the traditional

framework of solving situations of state succession to treaties we have added recent and concrete dimensions

that states have chosen to u se in this matter. For the elaboration of the paper we have used as research

methods, the analysis on issues related to the mentioned problems referring to the doctrinal views expressed

in treaties and scientific papers, documentary research, interpretation of legal norms in the matter.

Keywords: international law; sovereignty; Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties; international legal

order

1. Introduction

The succession of states issue remains a domain of gr eat uncertainty a nd controversy (Brownlie,

1990, p. 655) and that is because the feature of its legal and political institution involves not only

applying a set of rules of law in order to solve issues arising from the change occurred in the

international society, but also taking into consideration the political dimension (Duculescu, 1982, p

13) of these international relations.

The succession of states can be viewed from three perspectives: the succession to treaties and to

international organizations reflected by the relations established between the successor state and the

other subjects of the international community; succession to property, archives, debts regarding the

relations between state successor and predecessor State; succession referring to relations between the

successor state and citizens. Only the first mentioned dimension of the state succession represents the

subject of this paper, a complete analysis would require a larger space, being determined by the

complexity of this issue.

The complexity of the succession of States issue for international public law is given by the fact it is

needed to take into consideration not only two partners - the predecessor State and the successor

State - as it was erroneously claimed by some authors in the specialized domain, but a considerable

number of third party states enga ged in an extensive network of international a greements.

(Duculescu, 2002, p. 442)

1       , Address: 3 Galati Boulevard, 800654 Galati,

Romania, Tel.: +40.372.361.102, fax: +40.372.361.290. Corresponding author: janamaftei@univ-danubius.ro.