Integration Law – An Independent Legal System

Abstract

Economic integration has become a general trend in the development of cooperation between states. At the initial stages of integration construction, integration associations are a special kind of international organization. Later, the legal complexes of integration formations stand out and represent separate, independent legal systems (both from international law and from the national (domestic) law of the member states). This article attempts to theoretically generalize, synthesize and develop scientific provisions on integration associations and the legal systems created in them, accumulated in domestic and foreign legal science. The purpose of this study was the formation of a balanced, reasoned position, which fitted modern realities, on the existence of integration law. The methodological basis of the research was formed by a complex of general scientific and special methods for studying legal concepts, institutions and processes in the field of integration law: comparative legal, systemic and structural. Thanks to their application, it becomes possible to identify the general, specific and singular in the activities of integration associations. We managed to substantiate the concept of the formation within the framework of integration associations of our own institutional and legal systems (integration law), which have a close genetic link with international and national law. In our opinion, integration law (or ‘the law of integration formations’) acts as a system that presupposes a single internal structure, hierarchy and mutual consistency of its constituent parts.