There is a considerable amount of literature on the place within the European Community legal order of international agreements concluded by the European Community as well as those concluded by the Member States, and this includes the case-law of the European Court of Justice (hereafter ‘the Court’) on the matter. Similarly, much has been written on the relationship between European Community law and the legal systems of the Member States and on the relationship between international law and national legal systems. In contrast, the place of non-treaty international law within the Community legal order has not been the subject of such extensive analysis, whether in the literature or in the case-law of the Court. It is the treatment by the Court of this kind of international law that is the subject of this paper.

A number of recent environmental treaties provide for a non-compliance procedure (NCP) to address failure by Contracting Parties properly to implement their treaty obligations. Examples include the 1987 Montreal Protocol to the 1985 Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer; the 1991 VOC and 1994 Sulphur Protocols to the 1979 Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution Treaty; the 1992 Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic; and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, all of which envisage a separate mechanism for compliance being established. This recourse to non-compliance procedures is evidence of a growing awareness that traditional rules of international law concerned with material breach of treaty obligations and with state responsibility are inappropriate – and, indeed, unable – fully to address problems of environmental treaty compliance. This is a consequence both of the nature of international environmental obligations, in particular their non-reciprocal character, and of the inherent limitations of the present rules relating to treaty breach and state responsibility in addressing harm especially to the global commons. This is a consequence both of the nature of international environmental obligations, in particular their non-reciprocal character, and of the inherent limitations of the present rules relating to treaty breach and state responsibility in addressing harm especially to the global commons. Even the innovative provisions of the current draft articles of the ILC on state responsibility, which address breach of multilateral and erga omnes obligations and are discussed further below, do not completely fill the ‘responsibility gap’. Nonetheless recent international environmental agreements do not eschew traditional international law mechanisms; indeed, in all of the instances cited above, non-compliance procedures function alongside traditional dispute settlement mechanisms. This duality is possible if one views NCPs as located within a wider category of non-confrontational dispute avoidance procedures which combine classical methods, which have their roots in the dispute settlement mechanisms developed under general international law, with ‘innovative procedures for enhancing compliance with, and responding to, non-performance of international obligations.’

East Timor will soon achieve full independence and statehood. Its initial concerns as a newly independent state are political and economic stability. The current UN presence in East Timor should help ensure that the former concern is addressed so that the transition from a war torn non self-governing territory to a democratically elected government proceeds as smoothly as possible. The latter concern over East Timor's future economic stability is currently tied-up with continuing negotiations over the division of oil and gas revenues derived from a joint development arrangement, namely the Timor Gap Zone of Co-operation Treaty. This bilateral treaty was initially agreed in 1989 between Indonesia, which controlled East Timor from 1975 to 1999, and Australia. Its terms are currently being enforced on a provisional basis as agreed between the United Nations Transitional Administration of East Timor (UNTAET) and Australia while its future is being negotiated.