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Comme toutes les institutions de l’Union europeenne, la Cour de justice est multilingue et requise de pouvoir s’exprimer dans les 24 langues officielles que compte l’organisation. Pour gerer ce systeme unique au monde, la Cour dispose de services tres competents, de traduction et d’interpretation, dont elle ne cesse d’ameliorer l’efficacite pour fournir un travail de tres haute qualite, dans des delais raisonnables, comme l’exigent les regles de fonctionnement de l’institution judiciaire.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) finds its roots in the Helsinki Final Act of 1 August 1975. Despite the fact that it is not, legally speaking, an international organization, The OSCE carries out functions that are similar and sometimes even identical to those of such organizations. This ordinarily would warrant having in place a clear and predictable regime of privileges and immunities that allows it to operate efficiently. However, the OSCE has no such regime. The privileges and immunities of the OSCE and its staff vary from one participating state to another and from one legislative act to another. There have been calls to implement an international convention to address this anomaly. The purpose of this article, which is part of the volume on the legal framework of the OSCE (forthcoming in Steinbruck Platise/Moser/Peters (eds), The Legal Framework of the OSCE, Cambridge University Press), is to relay these calls and expand on them. It does so first by summarising the nature of the problem and the current patchwork of applicable regulatory statutes on privileges and immunities. It subsequently highlights the difficulties that this patchwork creates and how the creation of uniform regime through an international treaty would improve the day-to-day work of the OSCE.

The development of international organisations and the increasing significance of their role in a wide range of fields, has put at issue the adequacy of the rules governing their operation, with regard to the needs of modern justice. In particular, the question of the scope of the immunity from jurisdiction of international organisations is the subject of some debate, as the multiplication of disputes involving international organisations has led courts to address this topic with increasing frequency.1

The jurisdictional immunities of States and their immunities from measures of constraint collide head on with the right to a judge as it has progressively emerged in the course of the 20th century. This chapter, in French with an English summary, examines the way in which this conflict is resolved by the courts and in legal literature, focusing on instances where immunity is claimed with regard to an act performed in violation of a basic rule of international law. Keywords: courts; international law; jurisdictional immunities of States; legal literature