Solidarity Among Nations

In their common contribution, Markus Kotzur and Kirsten Schmalenbach have a closer look at international solidarity. Considering the various fields of public international law, the authors focus on two areas that are commonly wedded to the idea of assistance: disaster relieve and development cooperation. Given the lack of a generally accepted definition of solidarity in public international law, the authors consider the distinction between negative and positive solidarity. The former designates a mere response to certain dangers or events — i.e. assistance — whereas the latter embraces a more challenging concept, i.e. the agreement on mutual rights and obligations to achieve a common goal. According to the authors, disaster relief fits the legal principle of both negative and positive solidarity. Solidarity in cases of disaster response or disaster relief is about exercising as well as limiting sovereignty, i.e. the receiving and the providing states' autonomy. The receiving state must provide assistance in accordance with the principle of neutrality and impartiality, whereas the receiving state must grant the right to get access to the victims of a disaster. Unsurprisingly, such limitations of sovereignty are internationally envisaged only in soft-law documents, although rarely. In contrast, the European legal order provides in Art. 196, 222 TFEU a concept of disaster solidarity that has a firm basis in the law. At least in this policy area Union law offers something like a blueprint for multilevel solidarity within and beyond Europe. Development cooperation is another policy area that appears to be governed by the legal principle of solidarity. Indeed, the authors found that the modern concept of development cooperation fits comfortably into the notion of negative and positive solidarity given that it has moved away from simple inter-state charity. Since the 90s, global development cooperation has moved toward the idea of positive solidarity, at least if various soft law documents are observed in practice: donor and recipient countries are obliged to work in partnership to reach their common development goals. Donors align and harmonise their financial and technical aid to support the implementation of locally owned development strategies that are focused on achieving mutual shared development results. There is, however, a gap between the ideal and the real. An analysis of EU development cooperation reveals the tendency to de facto impose conditionality