UNIONS OF STATES. - Two or more States may voluntarily, and in a more or less stable manner, cooperate for general purposes of common interest. If the cooperation is governed by rules of internal law, a federal State comes into being, which, internationally, has relevance as such, whereas the Confederation, leaving the confederated States as autonomous and independent entities, holds them together by bonds of international law, but internationally this profile has no relevance, inasmuch as in the name and on behalf of the Confederation, as long as it exists, the federal organs act. If, on the other hand, the cooperation is regulated by rules of particular international law, one has the so-called U. di S.
I. UNION ON A BASIS OF INEQUALITY
The position of the States may be twofold: that is, it may be ordered on a basis of equality or of inequality. If the States cooperate on a basis of inequality in law, there arise the figures of the protectorate and of vassalage (cooperation is regulated by the pact of protectorate, which determines its conditions, it not being excluded that the protected State may be independently represented diplomatically), which are disappearing, and that of the mandate (in the threefold form A, B, C), born and dead with the covenant of the League of Nations (art. 22), and now replaced by the trusteeship administrations.
II. UNION ON A BASIS OF EQUALITY
If the relations of cooperation are based on the principle of equality among the States of the union, there are the two forms of personal union and of real union.
1. Personal union
The personal union is due to the accidental and temporary community of the sovereign, deriving from the internal legal orders, so that it has been doubted (Kuntz) whether it can be qualified as a union in the strict sense. Although it creates no direct bond between the two States, each preserving its own form of government (the king of Belgium, a constitutional monarch, was in the Congo an absolute sovereign), its own responsibilities, its own citizens (the citizen of one State is a foreigner in the other), it cannot be denied that the sovereign may find himself in difficulty in certain situations, since it may happen that he must adopt measures contrary to one of the States of which he is sovereign in favor of the other, so that certain constitutions expressly forbid it. One may recall the union of England and Hanover (1714-1838), which lasted over 120 years, that of Prussia and Neuchâtel, which lasted a century and a half (1702-1857), that of Holland and Luxembourg (1815-90), that of Belgium and the Congo (1885-1908). The Iceland-Denmark union (1918-44) and the Italy-Albania union (1939-43) have also been qualified as personal unions, but they were real unions. At present no personal unions exist. It should be noted in any case that these leave intact the personality and the action of the individual States, which is not the case with real unions.
2. Real union
The real union is distinguished by the fact that it is organized stably, according to norms deriving from parallel national laws, confirmed by custom and practice, or else by effect of an international treaty (pact of union), which precisely regulates the relations of the union on a stable basis. There is not only a common head of State, but also certain organs, certain fundamental services, and the union has repercussions also on a special situation of the citizens of the united countries.
Hence it is essential to take account of the pact of union. The archival order of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was founded on the so-called Compromise of 1867, which placed at the head of the coalition of the States included in the monarchy (1867-1918) the emperor - and of Hungary. By the Treaty of Moss (1815) the crown of Norway was assigned to the king of Sweden. The two States had in common the minister of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic representation. In 1905 (Treaty of Karlstadt) they peacefully liquidated the Union. By law no. 619 of 30 Nov. 1918 the two free sovereignties of Denmark and Iceland, the latter preserving its neutrality, formed a union, Denmark reserving to itself the management of certain Icelandic interests (supreme court, currency, fishing, foreign policy), which it did with great understanding of Icelandic interests, so much so that, when sanctions were adopted against Italy for the conflict with Ethiopia, Denmark joined the sanctions, while Iceland abstained from them. The Danish-Icelandic Pact of union was due to expire in 1940. The independence movement had made progress, and in that year Denmark was occupied by the German forces, while the Americans occupied Iceland. The Althing (16 May 1941) proclaimed the independence of Iceland, and in Feb. 1944 the Act of union was declared lapsed and the independent Republic was proclaimed (17 June 1944). The Italy-Albania union was brief (law no. 580 of 16 Apr. 1939), which was regulated by a series of conventions (citizenship and customs, 20 Apr. 1939; diplomatic representation, 3 June 1939, etc.).
Personal unions come to an end either through a change in the internal legal orders, or through the renunciation of one of the two sovereignties by the head of State, or through the extinction of one of the States. Real unions come to an end either by consent, or through the end of one of the States, or through the rupture of the union by the act of one of the States, suffered by the other.
III. NEW FORMS OF UNION
All these unions have fallen. The Soviet systems and those of the British Community have inspired certain new forms of union. In the Dutch-Indonesian Agreement of Batavia of 15 Nov. 1946 an attempt was made to establish a Union of Holland with the United States of Indonesia, with Surinam and Curaçao. But the unitary formation of Indonesia subsequently prevailed, and the general development of situations leaves one very doubtful about the real substance of the Union, which is increasingly oriented toward the symbolic sharing of the Dutch crown, that is, like the British one for the British community, which can also be considered as a particular typical form of unions of States, very evanescent.
Neither the French Union, as it is planned in the Constitution of 1946, nor the USSR can be considered as u. of s., inasmuch as they, despite the apparent state of equality of the united States, have a pilot State, and it is that State which gives the imprint to the Union and assumes its diplomatic representation, although a direct diplomatic representation, even if not general, of the individual States is not excluded (in fact in the USSR only the two Russian States of Byelorussia and Ukraine, and in France those of Indochina).
Finally, certain unions of limited or particular scope should be remembered, called simple unions, inasmuch as one State acts in representation of another State for determined purposes (e.g., Belgium for the customs union of Belgium and Luxembourg, Convention of Brussels 1921; Switzerland for Liechtenstein, Convention of Bern 29 March 1923) or else the States form unions in determined effects (e.g., Benelux, for now an economic union of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg; attempt at an Italo-French customs union). One would slide toward particular administrative unions, if their political character did not prevail. In the unions one must finally include certain forms of (political-military) alliances. U. of s. are also both the League of Nations (1920-46) and the UN, but these should be considered rather as Societies of States for purposes of general cooperation with the tendency to become the juridical organization of the international Community. Such a purpose, however, was lacking in the League of Nations, inasmuch as it failed to become universal, which was in part due to the manner in which it was born. Certain of these defects of origin are repeated for the UN, whose further developments it is difficult to foresee.
Bibliography
Amedeo Giannini