The Community shall have legal personality.
In each of the Member States, the Community shall enjoy the most extensive legal capacity accorded to legal persons under their laws; it may, in particular, acquire or dispose of movable and immovable property and may be a party to legal proceedings. To this end, the Community shall be represented by the Commission.
(repealed)
The Commission may, within the limits and under the conditions laid down by the Council in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty, collect any information and carry out any checks required for the performance of the tasks entrusted to it.
The contractual liability of the Community shall be governed by the law applicable to the contract in question.
In the case of non contractual liability, the Community shall, in accordance with the general principles common to the laws of the Member States, make good any damage caused by its institutions or by its servants in the performance of their duties.
The personal liability of its servants towards the Community shall be governed by the provisions laid down in the Staff Regulations or in the Conditions of Employment applicable to them.
The seat of the institutions of the Community shall be determined by common accord of the governments of the Member States.
(repealed)
The Community shall enjoy in the territories of the Member States such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the performance of its tasks, under the conditions laid down in the Protocol on the privileges and immunities of the European Union.
Member States shall take all appropriate measures, whether general or particular, to ensure fulfilment of the obligations arising out of this Treaty or resulting from action taken by the institutions of the Community. They shall facilitate the achievement of the Community's tasks.
They shall abstain from any measure which could jeopardize the attainment of the objectives of this Treaty.
Member States undertake not to submit a dispute concerning the interpretation or application of this Treaty to any method of settlement other than those provided for therein.
1.The members of the institutions of the Community, the members of committees, the officials and other servants of the Community and any other persons who by reason of their duties or their public or private relations with the institutions or installations of the Community or with Joint Undertakings are called upon to acquire or obtain cognisance of any facts, information, knowledge, documents or objects which are subject to a security system in accordance with provisions laid down by a Member State or by an institution of the Community, shall be required, even after such duties or relations have ceased, to keep them secret from any unauthorised person and from the general public.
Each Member State shall treat any infringement of this obligation as an act prejudicial to its rules on secrecy and as one falling, both as to merits and jurisdiction, within the scope of its laws relating to acts prejudicial to the security of the State or to disclosure of professional secrets. Such Member State shall, at the request of any Member State concerned or of the Commission, prosecute anyone within its jurisdiction who commits such an infringement.
2.Each Member State shall communicate to the Commission all provisions regulating within its territories the classification and secrecy of information, knowledge, documents or objects covered by this Treaty.
The Commission shall ensure that these provisions are communicated to the other Member States.
Each Member State shall take all appropriate measures to facilitate the gradual establishment of as uniform and comprehensive a security system as possible. The Commission may, after consulting the Member States concerned, make recommendations for this purpose.
3.The institutions of the Community, their installations and also the Joint Undertakings shall be required to apply the rules of the security system in force in the territory in which each of them is situated.
4.Any authorisation granted either by an institution of the Community or by a Member State to a person carrying out his activities within the field covered by this Treaty to have access to facts, information, documents or objects covered by this Treaty which are subject to a security system, shall be recognised by every other institution and every other Member State.
5.The provisions of this Article shall not prevent application of special provisions resulting from agreements concluded between a Member State and a third State or an international organisation.
The institutions of the Community, the Agency and the Joint Undertakings shall, in applying this Treaty, comply with the conditions of access to ores, source materials and special fissile materials laid down in national rules and regulations made for reasons of public policy or public health.
For the purposes of this Treaty, save as otherwise provided therein:
‘person’ means any natural person who pursues all or any of his activities in the territories of Member States within the field specified in the relevant chapter of this Treaty;
‘undertaking’ means any undertaking or institution which pursues all or any of its activities in the territories of Member States within the field specified in the relevant Chapter of this Treaty, whatever its public or private legal status.
For the purposes of this Treaty:
‘Special fissile materials’ means plutonium 239; uranium 233; uranium enriched in uranium 235 or uranium 233; and any substance containing one or more of the foregoing isotopes and such other fissile materials as may be specified by the Council, acting by a qualified majority on a proposal from the Commission; the expression ‘special fissile materials’ does not, however, include source materials.
‘Uranium enriched in uranium 235 or uranium 233’ means uranium containing uranium 235 or uranium 233 or both in an amount such that the abundance ratio of the sum of these isotopes to isotope 238 is greater than the ratio of isotope 235 to isotope 238 occurring in nature.
‘Source materials’ means uranium containing the mixture of isotopes occurring in nature; uranium whose content in uranium 235 is less than the normal; thorium; any of the foregoing in the form of metal, alloy, chemical compound or concentrate; any other substance containing one or more of the foregoing in such a concentration as shall be specified by the Council, acting by a qualified majority on a proposal from the Commission.
‘Ores’ means any ore containing, in such average concentration as shall be specified by the Council acting by a qualified majority on a proposal from the Commission, substances from which the source materials defined above may be obtained by the appropriate chemical and physical processing.
Save as otherwise provided, this Treaty shall apply to the European territories of Member States and to non European territories under their jurisdiction.
It shall also apply to the European territories for whose external relations a Member State is responsible.
The provisions of this Treaty shall apply to the Åland Islands in accordance with the provisions set out in Protocol No 2 to the Act concerning the conditions of accession of the Republic of Austria, the Republic of Finland and the Kingdom of Sweden.
Notwithstanding the previous paragraphs:
this Treaty shall not apply to the Faroe Islands.
This Treaty shall not apply to Greenland;
this Treaty shall not apply to the Sovereign Base Areas of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Cyprus;
this Treaty shall not apply to those overseas countries and territories having special relations with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland which are not listed in [X1Annex II to the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union;]
this Treaty shall apply to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man only to the extent necessary to ensure the implementation of the arrangements for those islands set out in the Treaty concerning the accession of new Member States to the European Economic Community and to the European Atomic Energy Community signed on 22 January 1972.
(Point (e) is deleted)
Editorial Information
X1 Substituted by Procès-verbal of rectification to the Treaty of Lisbon amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community, signed at Lisbon on 13 December 2007 (Official Journal of the European Union C 306 of 17 December 2007) (2009/C 290/01)This rectification has been carried out by means of a procès-verbal of rectification signed at Rome on 27 November 2009 with the Government of the Italian Republic as depository..
It shall be for the Commission to ensure the maintenance of all appropriate relations with the organs of the United Nations, of its specialised agencies and of the World Trade Organisation.
The Commission shall also maintain such relations as are appropriate with all international organisations.
The Community shall establish all appropriate forms of cooperation with the Council of Europe.
The Community shall establish close cooperation with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the details of which shall be determined by common accord.
The provisions of this Treaty shall not preclude the existence or completion of regional unions between Belgium and Luxembourg, or between Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, to the extent that the objectives of these regional unions are not attained by application of this Treaty.
If action by the Community should prove necessary to attain one of the objectives of the Community and this Treaty has not provided the necessary powers, the Council shall, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament, take the appropriate measures.
(repealed)
The Community may conclude with one or more States or international organisations agreements establishing an association involving reciprocal rights and obligations, common action and special procedures.
These agreements shall be concluded by the Council, acting unanimously after consulting the European Parliament.
Where such agreements call for amendments to this Treaty, these amendments shall first be adopted in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 48(2) to (5) of the Treaty on European Union.
The Protocols annexed to this Treaty by common accord of the Member States shall form an integral part thereof.
This Treaty is concluded for an unlimited period.