Legal Regime of the International Associations of Public Authorities and Public Institutions in Scientific Research Field

International associations of public authorities and public institutions consist of various forms of cooperation with similar bodies or private legal entities from other states, with the purpose of meeting a specific public interest in correspondence with their scope of activity, by defining common goals to be achieved. The legal regime of these international associations, materialized either in cooperation and mutual support agreements or in legal entities created by the will of the shareholders, is governed on one hand, by constitutional and administrative rules regulating their competence in this respect and, on the other hand, by the rules of public international law applicable to all types of international cooperation whether it generates new legal entities or not. Considering these, the paper is focused on a foray into the sphere of constitutional and legal framework governing the complex system of principles and rules applicable to the extended concept of association, aiming to identify the main legal instruments and the correspondent terminology which define it. By analyzing this distinct function which also defines the competence of the administrative bodies, new valences of government actions, outside the classical administrative ones, are identified. This new approach of the administrative competencies, which are subject, not only to the rules of administrative law, but also to other branches of law, may offer a more complex perspective regarding the role of the public authorities and institutions and argues for considering the association of a new administrative concept. Since scientific research is, by its nature, an important pillar of interstate cooperation’s, we believe that an analysis of the forms, features and legal status of international associations in this area, fully supports our opinion that a new administrative institution has to be considered among the classical ones.