Kuzma V. International legal aspects of cooperation between the Council of Europe and the European Union

The thesis is devoted to the issue of theoretical, legal and practical aspects of cooperation between the Council of Europe and the European Union. The historical retrospective of the development of co-operation between the CoE and the EU is explored and a special type of cooperation – «strategic partnership» – is singled out. The peculiarities of the legal status of the CоE and the EU as various evolving institutions with contractual capacity in external relations that are actively developing throughout their lifetime and mutually complementary are analyzed. The peculiarities of the legal nature of decisions and agreements adopted by the CоE and the EU, being involved in the joint process of formation of the European legal space, are singled out. The contribution of the CoE to the expansion of the EU as sui generis association in the context of legal interaction is substantiated. The peculiarities of the cooperation between the CoE and the EU on the development of contemporary international law and the consequences of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU (the so-called “Brexit”) for the European legal space are highlighted. For more than half a century of the development of mutual relations between the CoE and the EU in the process of using them a complex of legal means and techniques at different levels has developed an appropriate institutional and treaty mechanism of cooperation with its own peculiarities. At the present stage, cooperation between the CoE and the EU is carried out in the different directions and in the different international legal forms. The «strategic partnership» between the CoE and the EU is carried out both in the traditional international legal forms of cooperation to all international organizations, and in the «innovative» ones, which are specific only for these European organizations. The theoretical and practical justification for the fact that the «joint programmes» of the CoE and the EU with Ukraine are a special international legal form of cooperation in a tripartite format is carried out. The form of cooperation in the practice of relations between the CoE and the EU is proposed – «associate partnership» and the ways of its consolidation at the legal level are proposed. The possibility and consequences of the EU accession to the Statute of the Сouncil of Europe and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950 have been analyzed. It is determined that along with close cooperation between the CoE and the EU there is a phenomenon of regional fragmentation that is characterized by the creation of two legal regimes within the framework of the CoE and the EU, and the jurisdictional conflict between the European Court of Human Rights and the EU Court in the field of human rights protection.