Effects of International Agreements in European Community Law: Are the Dice Cast?

The purpose of this contribution is to explore the extent to which the “direct effect” doctrine, developed within the Community legal system for the purpose of the relations between Community law and the Member States’ law, has spilled over into the field of the relations between international law and Community law, or, to use a somewhat daring comparison, to what extent the doctrine of McCulloch v. Maryland has been applied in a Foster and Elam situation.