Due to the fact that the EC has legislated in most areas of environmental law, it is also competent to implement most Conferences/Meetings of Parties COP/MOP) decisions. Practice within multilateral environmental agreements MEAs), especially as regards the adjustment procedure of annexes/appendices, prove that adjustments can de facto result in substantive changes of the legal obligations of the contracting parties that could not have been foreseen, and this even against the will of a minority of parties. In this article the author shortly describes the legal structure that is common to most MEAs; discusses the question whether COPs/MOPs can be categorised as organs of an international organisations; and finally turns to the issue of communitarisation of binding decisions adopted within MEAs.
European Energy and Environmental Law Review