Suchergebnisse

The European Community (EC) has taken on an outward-looking dimension over the years since its first establishment, developing structures and tools which are unprecedented in the history of international relations. The original signatories of the Treaty of Rome accepted the idea of a little Europe only as a first step towards something that would be much bigger and more powerful; ultimately, they wanted to provide the EC with the international power necessary to realize the idea of the common market. It is not possible to properly define the EC's actions towards the rest of the world as foreig

This article analyses the limited participation of Italian farmers' unions in the demonstration and the changes it brought to the Italian farm labour force. The first reason for their non-participation was these farmers' lack of economic means. Italian farmers were among the poorest in the Community and would have had to travel far. Reaching Brussels from Italy, especially from the centre and the south, required a long and costly journey. The second reason was political. Although not always willing to acknowledge it openly, the Italian unions agreed with the demands of the Italian government, which had supported the Mansholt Plan throughout the negotiations. Many of Italy's demands were accepted in the Plan, and the resulting reform would also ultimately provide support for Italian agriculture. Instead, the demonstrators attacked the Plan and demanded higher prices for the products for which Italy was a strong importer while major Italian production – especially Mediterranean produce – was not supported by the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP).

In the framework of the so-called Barcelona process, the European Union concluded several bilateral agreements with Morocco aimed to deepen their economic integration. The 2000 Association agreement European Union–Morocco is the general legal framework for the development of relationships among the two parties. In this context, the recent Agreement on reciprocal liberalisation measures on agricultural products and fishery products, entered in force in 2012, and the Fisheries Partnership Agreement, issued in 2013, were established. They reiterate and update former agreements. No one of them expressly excludes the territory of Western Sahara from the scope of application, in contrast with other similar agreements negotiated with other countries, such as the Free trade pact between Morocco and the United States of America. The non-exclusion of the territory of Western Sahara raises several concerns on the compliance of these agreements with International Law, not only in relation to the principle of self-determination of peoples but also with the principle of sovereignty of natural resources, the prohibition of exploitation of resources of a territory under occupation, the obligation to not recognise situations arisen in an illegal way, the prohibition to negotiate agreement with an occupying country once the process of decolonisation has begun