Union Freedoms in the Armed Forces: Still a Taboo?

This article addresses unionisation in the armed forces, an issue which has recently attracted the attention of the courts, most prominently in Europe. First, the article focuses on the organisational profiles of military structure, discussing the relationships between the exercise of union freedoms and the necessity of preserving the chain of command, the readiness of troops and their political neutrality. It concludes that some recent evolutions in military organisation have contributed to the pressure to unionise the military. Therefore, this article focuses on the legal perspective to clarify the role of international law in this issue. To this end, international treaties and courts’ or authoritative bodies’ interpretations of them are collected, analysed and compared. The article then confirms that several arguments developed in the European judicial context can be reasonably applied outside Europe, in accordance with similar or identical clauses enshrined in all international treaties addressing the issue of military unionisation. International law thus leaves room for interpretations whereby restrictions on military unionisation should not go so far as to ban union freedoms altogether. Finally, this article considers the risks inherent in military unionisation and suggests possible approaches that will facilitate a homogeneous balance between union rights and the general interests at stake.