Extraterritorial intrusion of jurisdiction

A country may introduce legislation requiring its corporations' subsidiaries in foreign countries to conform to regulations at home concerning, for example, anti-trust matters, trading with proscribed countries, and the repatriation of profits. This amounts to an intrusion of the base country jurisdiction into that of the country in which the subsidiary is located, effectively infringing upon its sovereignty. While this illustrates unilateral intended intrusion of jurisdiction there are a number of multilateral intended intrusions that have originated within intergovernmental organizations, such as the UN and the EEC/EU for example.

In the past, this issue has arisen primarily in connection with USA investments in other industrialized countries and with attempts to enforce US anti-trust law or policy with respect to communist countries. Recently the problem has come to be of more general concern with the introduction of regulations designed to assist the balance of payments position of the capital exporting country. Intergovernmental organizations may be the vehicle for proposed intrusions of sovereignty and legal jurisdiction under the most high-sounding reasons. For example, one of the nation-state members of the EEC/EU forcefully advanced an idea for a European Judiciary Area to assure that there would be no frontiers for terrorists: common laws and legal processes would be enacted, and possibly a European court would be created to try terrorists under this proposal. It was defeated by the defence of member nations of their jurisdictional sovereignty despite some 700 terrorist acts per year in NATO Europe.