The Montevideo Convention in Article 3 implies that a sovereign state can still be a sovereign state even if no other countries recognise that it exists.[25][27] As a restatement of customary international law, the Montevideo Convention merely codified existing legal norms and its principles,[28] and therefore does not apply merely to the signatories of international organizations (such as the United Nations),[6][29][26] but to all subjects of international law as a whole.[30][31] A similar opinion has been expressed by the European Economic Community,[32] reiterated by the European Union, in the principal statement of its Badinter Committee,[33] and by Judge Challis Professor, James Crawford.[29]