Das Neutralitätsrecht Österreichs und der Schweiz im »weiten Feld« des internationalen Rechts. Aktuelle Entwicklungen im Vergleich

The war in Ukraine has again raised the question to what extend the law of neutrality is in line with the modern law of peace of the United Nations order. This article examines the relevant discussion with regard to the specific neutrality status of Austria and Switzerland. It can be shown that in both legal systems there are efforts to defend the status of neutrality with legally hardly justifiable arguments. In Austria, there is the additional problem that neutrality is no longer compatible with EU law (in particular with the rules of the CFSP). Attempts to justify neutrality are partly based on circular reasoning and refer to legal norms that are no longer in place or never were. Recently, a distinction between neutrality law and neutrality policy seems to have become popular. On this ground, the arguments in favor of neutrality policy often take, at least implicitly, the existence of neutrality law for granted while in reality this is not the case. Neutrality has often been advocated out of specific political reasons and in the meantime these political pleas have gained a life on their own seemingly attributing legal nature to the concept of neutrality. In order to overcome this discrepancy, various legal concepts have been conceived but in the end they are not convincing. In this article it is argued that it would be an important task of academic teaching to evidence this conflict between myth and reality thereby also fostering a more transparent and better informed democratic decision taking process.