47To interpret the provisions of secondary law in the light of an obligation imposed by an international agreement which does not bind all the Member States would amount to extending the scope of that obligation to those Member States which are not contracting parties to such an agreement. The latter Member States must however be regarded as ‘third countries’ for the purposes of that agreement. Such an extension would be incompatible with the general international law principle of the relative effect of treaties, according to which treaties must neither harm nor benefit third countries (‘pacta tertiis nec nocent nec prosunt’).
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