Dispute Settlement Mechanism in a Mixed-Mixed Agreement: Some Loose Ends. The Economic Partnership Agreement EU-ECOWAS-WAEMU.

Abstract

The EU has developed an important practice regarding partnership agreements that has reached a new stage with mixed-mixed partnership agreements, in which the EU and its Member States are party to an agreement with another international organization and its Member States. Many issues may arise from these kinds of agreements, but this article focuses on the dispute settlement mechanism included in the Economic Partnership Agreement among the EU, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and their Member States. The agreement establishes different options for dispute settlement and determining and implementing these dispute settlement mechanisms may give rise to conflicts of law, the overlapping of courts’ competences, and conflicts of competences between the organizations and their Member States or among the Member States. The EU already has a practice in place for resolving these problems, but such a mechanism is lacking in the practices of the ECOWAS and WAEMU.