Reflections on the Architecture of the EU after the Treaty of Lisbon: The European Judicial Approach to Fundamental Rights (original) (raw)
Related papers
This paper is based on a socio-legal research which evaluates the impact of the Treaty of Lisbon on the area of fundamental rights within the EU. The project's central core is on the relationship between the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU, as it might be termed the Luxembourg Court) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR, as it might be termed the Strasbourg Court) in the pre and post EU's accession to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). The work, as informed by empirical findings, questions whether the two Courts' dialogue in the fundamental rights sphere could be analysed using the language of constitutional pluralism, doctrine elaborated by scholars to describe the multiple claims of authority between the CJEU and the national courts. The after accession era offers interesting features to revisit the constitutional pluralism doctrine, challenging its appropriateness when granting final authority to the Strasbourg Court in the European human rights field.
2012
Having in mind the EU's policy to rebuild the democratic systems within the former European communist countries and its involvement in international actions regarding human rights enforcement, there is no doubt about the importance of individuals rights protection in the European Union's legal system. In this respect, the present paper analyzes the evolution of the principle of EU's human rights protection. The research done on the EU legislation and courts' jurisprudence shows that there are three main stages related to the EU evolution of human rights protection: first-the rejection, by the ECJ, of human rights principle as part of Community Law; second-its acceptance, recognition and protection by the EU's judges; third-the regulation and monitoring of the fundamental rights and freedoms at the European level. Based mainly on the ECJ's jurisprudence, this paper tries to answer the following questions: What was the political motivation not to explicitly pro...
Human Rights in the EU: Rethinking the Role of the European Concention on Human Rights after Lisbon
European Constitutional Law Review, 2011
Though the Treaty of Lisbon mentions the European Human Rights Convention in different contexts, it revalued its legal significance for the EU. By virtue of its Article 52, the Fundamental Rights Charter partly incorporated the European Convention. The partial incorporation challenges the human rights standards currently granted in the practice of EU law, which unfolds challenges to and consequences for the interpretation, application and relevance of human rights within the EU’s legal order. Since the partial incorporation of the European Convention includes the Strasbourg case law, the autonomy of the EU’s legal order is affected. The new importance of the Convention also engenders changes to its role within the domestic legal orders of the EU Member States.
The European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights two years later
2012
Abstract: After the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights has found a place among the formal sources of EU law, and has become a standard of review for the validity of EU acts. This article aims to analyze whether this momentous change is reflected in the judgments of the Court of Justice, and more precisely how the Luxembourg judges are dealing with this source.
Je t'aime . . . moi non plus: Ten years of application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights
Common Market Law Review, 2022
The first area of discussion concerns the need to ensure the visibility of the EU Charter in both EU law and at national level. This is not an easy task due to the complexity of many substantive and horizontal provisions of the Charter. Notably, the role of Article 51 of the EU Charter is to be discussed in detail in relation to the lack of visibility of the substantive provisions and their difficult invocability in certain circumstances. The second discussion relates to the overuse of the procedural rights/provisions of the EU Charter contra the limited use of the social rights/provisions enshrined in the Solidarity Chapter (Title IV). The bilan is crystal clear and points towards a clear dominance of Article 47 EU Charter (‘effective judicial protection’) in the Court of Justice case law, whereas the social provisions of the Charter constitute the parents pauvres of the European Bill of Rights and of the EU legal order in general. This conclusion is reflected and developed in many contributions of this book. The third area of discussion relates to the interpretation of the horizontal provisions of the EU Charter, where a lack of coherence is pointed out, particularly in relation to 52 of the EU Charter. The CJEU has developed a complex and incoherent interpretation of these provisions in developing for instance the ‘essence test’ and a bumpy doctrine of ‘corresponding rights’. The fourth and last area of discussion has an eye in the future and concerns the recent evolution in the CJEU case law as to the application of the EU Charter in Rule of Law issues. This development is fostered by the backsliding of the rule of law in many Member Sates of the European Union. The Charter in combination with Article 2 TEU and Article 19 TEU reveals to be an efficient instrument (at least more efficient than Article 7 TEU) to counter the systematic, perpetual and vile attacks committed by the illiberal States on the Rule of Law. Yet the proximity between the Rule of Law principles and the (constitutional?) principle of mutual trust in the CJEU case law appears to be problematic.
The Practice of Judicial Interaction in the Field of Fundamental Rights, 2022
The multilevel system of fundamental rights protection that applies in Europe may be interpreted as the result of national, regional and international legislators' shared concerns about the protection of rights and principles essential in democratic societies. 1 However, the normative hierarchy, the overlap and the cross-referencing between national and European bills of rights creates a complex fundamental rights web that is difficult for those willing to put these principles into practice to untangle. 2 1