TO THE QUESTIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LEGALITY OF LOCAL COMMUNITY IN THE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ECONOMIC RELATIONS
Authors: Nataliya Yakymchuk  , Ganna Vlasova  , Oksana Vaitsekhovska  , Petro Tsymbal  , Yuliia Baliuk  
Published: October 2020

The article is devoted to the issue of international legal personality of cities as subnational persons. The rapid urbanization of cities, modern processes of decentralization of power in the countries and the growth of economic globalization in the world have led to an increase in the autonomy of subnational individuals (especially such their kind as cities). The sphere of greatest manifestation of such independence is economic, within which, cities are increasingly entering into foreign economic relations not only with foreign legal entities, but also with international intergovernmental organizations and governments of foreign countries when solving economic and economic issues of local level. The rapid growth and such foreign economic activity, the legal basis of which, as a rule, are international treaties between the countries, has caused ambiguous understanding of the legal status of subnational persons and highly actualized the research of this problem in the context of determining their international legal personality. The article analyzes the doctrinal approaches to the concept of "subject of international law" and the criteria for their separation from other legal entities participating in relations with a foreign element. The basic international documents and normative legal acts of foreign countries that regulate the legal status of territorial communities of cities as subjects of local self-government and give the rights to enter into a contractual relationship on their own and in a responsible manner in a transboundary context are investigated. Exploring the forms of urban cooperation at the regional and universal levels, the following forms of networking of cities as infrastructures, which are factors of international legal regulation (aimed at economic solidarity) and political ones, in which cities often act as agents of international intergovernmental organizations, are distinguished. Based on the analysis of international documents and national legal acts regulating the legal status of subnational persons and their relations with subjects of international law, as well as domestic and foreign doctrines of international legal personality, a scientific approach to the status of cities in economic relations with a foreign element is formulated. Cities are defined as complementary (substantive) subjects of international legal relations with a special international legal personality: in the formally-legal plane they are granted the rights in foreign economic activity by the legal norms of the national law, which these relations are regulated; similarly to the states, cities (like other subnationals) are representatives of the public interest of the communities of cities; in the economic-practical plane act as independent subjects of economic relations of an international character. Illustrated signs of the rapid development of "city diplomacy", which, on the background of decentralization of authorities to territorial communities and economic globalization, led to the expansion of the scope of international legal personality in the practice of foreign economic relations and caused a gradual change in their international legal personality in international acts.