By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: July 16th, 2010 What constitutes a state? The accepted definition comes in Article One of the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states. The EU has qualified for decades on (a), (b) and (c). Now it has ticked the final box. The European Constitution Lisbon Treaty, which came into effect on 1 December 2009, gave the EU “legal personality”: that is, the right to sign treaties. Now, the EU has been formally recognised by the United Nations. To carry out the foreign policy of the new state, we havea European foreign service. Taken together, these things surely amount to “capacity to enter into relations with other states”.Daniel Hannan
Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the EU is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free. He is the winner of the Bastiat Award for online journalism.
The EU is now recognised as a state under international law