27
be regarded as incapable of acceptance and as
eo ipso
invalid and without legal
effect.
81
This is where the problem lies. As far as no objective procedure is
available for the determination of the compatibility of the reservation, every party
will make this evaluation individually. This individual appraisal of the compatibility
will not affect the position of the other parties. The consequence of this is that a
reservation can be considered permissible by some states and impermissible by
others.
One of the flaws with the VCLT is that it
does not explicitly regulate
impermissible reservations in any other way other than that it states that a state
may not formulate reservations incompatible with the object and purpose of the
treaty.
82
It says nothing about how states should react to these sorts of
reservations, nor does it say anything about its legal effect. Even if there are
scholars with thoughts about these issues,
83
many questions arise. For instance, is
it possible for states to accept this kind of reservation, or do they have to object
to impermissible reservations? In the latter case,
can the state, even though its
reaction, a) let the treaty enter into force in its entirety, or b) declare that a treaty
relationship between the reserving state and itself is impossible? The complicating
factor is, as said above, that the decision whether a reservation is permissible or
not, as well as the decision how to react, is entirely up to the state.
84
It has been
said that these judgements are made on an almost bilateral basis, between the
reserving state and the other state parties “one on one”.
That more or less cuts the
multilateral treaty into bilateral relations between the reserving state and all the
other parties to the treaty, where they decide upon the legal status of their treaty
relations.
85
The acceptance of a permissible reservation is an individual act. It does not
prejudice the position of the other state parties that might decide to object to the
same reservation. The VCLT thus paves the way for what has been called a
“fragmentation” of a multilateral compound of norms into an agglomeration of
bilateral relationships. Such a disintegration of multilateral into bilateral
relationships brings chaos into treaty relations according to the unanimity rule
propagators. The situation regarding reservations and
their legal effect might not
81
Horn, p. 216.
82
What the Vienna Convention does is that it gives state parties to a convention the right to
object to reservations that are considered permissible according to article 19. The objections
to permissible reservations are based on other considerations than the objective decision on
the permissibility. In these cases political considerations may be predominant according to
Mårsäter, Mårsäter & Åkermark, p. 385, note 12.
83
Horn, among others, see above, this chapter.
84
There are exemptions from this general practice, see for instance the Convention against
Racial Discrimination article 20.2, which states that the state parties to the treaty decide
together whether a reservation is allowed. See also the
European Convention on Human
Rights and its American counterpart, and the control that their supervisory bodies perform
concerning the permissibility/validity of reservations made to those treaties. Mårsäter &
Åkermark, p.385 note.13.
85
For more on this topic, see chapter 5.2.3 below.
28
be chaotic, but it is not far from it. It is practically impossible to get a
comprehensive overview of a treaty, its state parties and the obligations each state
has accepted when the treaty relations are individual and separate between all the
state parties to the treaty.
Horn explains how there are two conditions that have to be fulfilled for a
reservation to become binding between treaty parties.
86
The two requirements are
admissibility and opposability
87
, which both have to be ascertained before
deciding upon the validity of a reservation. The two are,
as stated above, treated
separately in articles 19 and 20 VCLT.
86
Horn, p. 215.
87
See above in Chapter 3.1.
