Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union
	The preamble of the Charter
Purpose	Enshrine certain fundamental rights

File:Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.jpg

Minibook published by the European Union containing the text of the Charter

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is a document enshrining certain fundamental rights.

The wording of the document has been agreed at ministerial level and has been incorporated into the draft Constitution for Europe. However, the draft constitution was rejected by referendums in France and the Netherlands. The text was also incorporated in the later Treaty of Lisbon, but Ireland rejected this in a referendum. A second referendum approved the treaty on October 2, 2009. The Charter will have the force of law if the Lisbon treaty is ratified by the final member state: the Czech Republic.

Origin

The European Court of Justice decided in 1996 that the treaties establishing the European Community do not empower it to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights, this despite all EC/EU member states being signatories to the Convention (Opinion 2/94 "Accession by the Community to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms" of 28 March 1996).

Following this, the Cologne European Council (3/4 June 1999) entrusted the task of drafting the Charter to a Convention.[1] The Convention held its constituent meeting in December 1999 and adopted the draft on 2 October 2000. The Biarritz European Council (13/14 October 2000) unanimously approved the draft and forwarded it to the European Parliament and the European Commission.

The European Parliament gave its agreement on 14 November 2000 and the Commission on 6 December 2000. The Presidents of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission signed and proclaimed the Charter on behalf of their institutions on 7 December 2000 in Nice. Thus the aforementioned three institutions of the European Union (Council, Commission, and Parliament) decided that the Charter is the appropriate format (for the moment) of presenting the fundamental principles of human rights for the Union.

Status

As it stands, the Charter is not a treaty, constitutional, or legal document, and has the sui generis value of a ‘solemn proclamation’ by three of the Union’s most important institutions. Its text is mainly in harmony with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, and therefore can be taken as a confirmation (by the Council, Commission, and Parliament) of the pre-existing rights contained therein, while adding widely-accepted principles such as the ‘right’ to good administration, workers’ social rights, and bioethics. The Charter’s ‘power’ or ‘effect’, if it has any, may be only these:

The proclaiming institutions (and other institutions such as the European Court of Justice^{[dubious – discuss]}) are unlikely to contradict the Charter, since they have ‘solemnly proclaimed’ it.
Common law, Community law, and case law are generally in harmony with it, so there is little probability of conflict.

It does not have the status of Community law. Therefore, cases cannot be brought solely on the ground of a contravention of the Charter.

As part of the proposed Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe

Part II of the proposed European Constitution, which was signed in October 2004 but which failed to be ratified after referendum defeats in France and the Netherlands. The intention was to enable the European Union to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights, thus enabling the European Court of Human Rights to rule on the basis of this Convention.

As part of the Treaty of Lisbon

The Treaty of Lisbon that has been signed in December 2007 makes a reference to the Charter. However Ireland rejected the treaty in a referendum, which meant that the treaty did not come into force (Ireland passed a second referendum on the treaty in October 2009). The Charter was slightly modified before the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon, to make it resemble the text that was part of the rejected European Constitution. The article referring to the Charter reads as follows:

The Union recognises the rights, freedoms and principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union of 7 December 2000, as adapted at Strasbourg, on 12 December 2007, which shall have the same legal value as the Treaties.

The United Kingdom and Poland have interpretations of the treaty as described in their attached protocol. The protocol limits justiciability of the charter in UK and Poland. In practice this means that European Courts cannot force changes to laws on labour rights in Britain and on individual rights -such as homosexual marriage or abortion- in Poland. Czech republic is also negotiating an opt out from the Charter in order to avoid that Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia after WWII could claim property back.

Notable provisions

The Charter is organized into 6 titles: dignity, freedoms, equality, solidarity, citizens’ rights, and justice. The second, third, and fourth rubrics reflect the three generations of human rights after Karel Vasak.

(Article 3) Prohibition of reproductive cloning of human beings
(Article 53) ‘Nothing in this Charter shall be interpreted as restricting or adversely affecting human rights and fundamental freedoms as recognised, in their respective fields of application, by Union law and international law and by international agreements to which the Union, the Community or all the Member States are party, including the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and by the Member States' constitutions.’

References

External links