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Final Act of the Viennese Ministerial Conferences (May 15, 1820)

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Art. 5. The Confederation has been founded as an indissoluble union, and therefore no member of the same is at liberty to secede from this union.

Art. 6. The Confederation is, according to its original purpose, restricted to the states currently participating. – The admission of a new member can only take place when the entirety of the Confederal membership finds such to be compatible with existing circumstances and appropriate to the advantage of the whole. – Changes in the current vested rights of the Confederal members cannot result in any changes in the rights and duties of the same with respect to the Confederation without the express approval of the whole. – A voluntary cession of sovereign rights adhering to one Confederal territory can take place without such approval only to the advantage of a fellow ally.

Art. 7. The Confederal Assembly, formed by the plenipotentiaries of all the Confederal members, represents the Confederation in its totality and is the permanent constitutional organ of its will and action.

Art. 8. The individual plenipotentiaries at the Federal Diet are unconditionally dependent on their state governments issuing them their instructions and are responsible to them alone for the faithful observance of the instructions issued to them, as well for the performance of their office in general.

Art. 9. The Confederal Assembly exercises its rights and obligations only within the limits drawn out for it. Its efficacy is determined in the first instance by the rules of the Confederal Act, and by the Basic Laws concluded or still to be concluded pursuant to the same but, where these are not sufficient, by the Confederal aims designated in the Basic Treaty.

Art. 10. The overall will of the Confederation is articulated through constitutional resolutions of the Confederal Assembly; but those resolutions are also constitutional that, within the limits of the competence of the Confederal Assembly, are passed by open vote, after previous deliberation, either in committee of the whole or in the plenum, depending on whether the one or the other was prescribed by the provisions of Basic Law.

Art. 11. As a rule, the Confederal Assembly passes resolutions required for taking care of the common concerns of the Confederation in committee of the whole according to absolute majority. This form of passing a resolution takes place in all cases where established general principles are to be applied, or laws passed and institutions established, but in general for all subjects of deliberation which the Confederal Act or later resolutions have not specifically exempted.

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