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Legal acts performed by EU Member States applying Union law come within the scope of the Convention and can give rise to adjudication by the ECtHR. A long series of judgments illus-trate the ECtHR’s approach regarding the application of Union law by the courts of EU Mem-ber States. The Convention and Union law are not two autonomous systems separated by a watertight fence. Both European Courts should therefore adopt a wholistic approach in this area, because only a wholistic view takes full account of the legal reality which is one of inter-action and intertwining. The ECtHR makes abundant use of EU law sources, thereby always explicitly referring to them. Three different categories of cases can be identified in how the CJEU goes about the Convention in its case-law.
The landmark judgment in the case of Bivolaru and Moldovan v. France, which concerned the execution of a European arrest warrant, provides a good illustration of the effects of the Con-vention liability of EU Member States for their implementation of EU law. These effects touch on such notions as cooperation, trust, complementarity, autonomy and responsibility. The two European courts have been cooperating towards some convergence of the standards applicable to the handling of EAWs. The Bosphorus presumption and its application in Bivo-laru and Moldovan show the amount of trust placed by the Strasbourg Court in the EU pro-tection of fundamental rights in this area. To the extent that their standards of protection coincide, the Luxembourg and Strasbourg jurisdictions are complementary. However, the two protection systems remain autonomous, notably as regards the methodology applied to fundamental rights. Ultimately, the EU Member States engage their Convention responsibility for the execution by their domestic courts of any EAWs.
The picture regarding the protection of fundamental rights in Europe today increasingly looks like a patchwork, due to a lack of coordination at different levels. Developments reinforcing that picture include the emergence of different methodologies for the application of funda-mental rights, Constitution-based challenges to European law by national Supreme Courts, codifications of existing case-law and the creation of so-called « hybrid » institutions. The resulting complexity is a challenge for domestic courts, a threat to the confidence of citizens and detrimental to the fundamental rights themselves, their special role and authority being gradually eroded by a general relativism. EU-accession could have an anti-patchwork effect and represent a chance for a general coordination of fundamental rights in Europe. Beyond making the Convention binding upon the EU, it would also have a pan-European (re)structu-ring effect by confirming the Convention as the minimum benchmark providing both the bedrock and the framework for any other national or European fundamental rights as well as for the necessary judicial dialogue on the latter. Good progress has been achieved since the resumption of negotiations for EU-accession, justifying cautious optimism as to the possibility to find adequate solutions to the outstanding issues.
The hybrid EPPO structure is operating under a hybrid set of fundamental rights, thus calling into question the well-established principle of the single set of norms applicable throughout criminal proceedings. Moreover, the system is characterized by a distortion of the commonly applied logical link between liability for violations of fundamental rights and control over the actions entailing those violations. EU Member States risk being held accountable under the Convention for actions on behalf of the EPPO which they did not fully control and which were subject to a different corpus of fundamental rights. The EU, for its part, takes the risk of seeing EPPO prosecutions being invalidated by domestic courts applying a Convention protection level which may be higher than the Union level. The only way to minimize the impact of these distortions is for the EU to become a Contracting Party to the Convention, along with its own Member States. This would do away with the ambivalence of the legal framework characterizing the protection of fundamental rights under the EPPO Regulation. It would also contribute to a better implementation of the principles of the rule of law and procedural fairness, advocated by the Regulation itself. Such a move would seem all the more important in light of the fact that if the EPPO proves successful, its competence might be extended in the future to other areas.
Article 6(2) TEU provides that the EU shall accede to the European Convention on Human Rights. However, the EU accession project has been significantly delayed by Opinion 2/13 of the ECJ. At the same time, there appears to be some harmony in the case law of the two European Courts, which could lead to the status quo being considered as a valid alternative to EU accession. It might therefore be tempting to remove Article 6(2) altogether from the TEU at the next revision of the Treaties. This paper argues that Article 6(2) should stay in the TEU, because a closer look reveals that the current status quo is not satisfactory: it does not allow an adequate representation of the EU in the procedure before the European Court of Human Rights, nor is it capable of ensuring in the long-term comprehensive and stable consistency between EU law and the Convention. Moreover, removing Article 6(2) TEU would undermine the very idea of a collective understanding and enforcement of fundamental rights. This could initiate a process leading to the current European architecture of fundamental rights protection being unravelled altogether. Hence, there is no return from Article 6(2) TEU. Neither is there from actually implementing it.
Provided for under the Treaty of Lisbon, the accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights is destined to be a landmark in European
legal history because it will finally make it possible for individuals and undertakings
to apply to the European Court of Human Rights for review of the acts of European
Union institutions. After nearly three years of negotiations, a draft agreement on European
Union accession was adopted on 5 April 2013. In the light of the draft agreement,
this publication offers a concise analysis of the reasons for European Union accession to the Convention, the means by which this is to be achieved and the effects it will have.
Protocol No. 16 and EU Law
(2015)
Protocol No. 16 will allow the highest courts of the Contracting States to the European Convention on Human Rights Convention to request an advisory opinion from the European Court of Human Rights on "questions of principle relating to the interpretation or application of the rights and freedoms defined in the
Convention or the protocols thereto". However, in its Opinion 2/13, the Court of Justice of the European Union expressed reservations in respect of that Protocol. The article analyses those reservations and looks for ways to dispell them.
This article offers an in-depth analysis of the relationship between European law and the
case-law born of the European Convention. The author addresses the tension between
the drive for legal certainty and the need to expand fundamental rights. By offering an
overview of the legal reality that this tension has created, the author seeks to find the balance
between needless plurality and rigid certainty. Through this overview, the author argues
that the promotion of fundamental rights must be organised along lines of harmony and
not of uniformity. To do this, he offers a detailed analysis of the respective approaches
to the detention of asylum seekers and to the privilege against self-incrimination. The
article thus traces the increasingly inter-referential nature of Strasbourg and Luxembourg
jurisprudence, arguing that this trend has the potential to promote fundamental rights, as
long as the jurisdiction of human rights’ legislation is significantly expanded. The author
goes on to discuss the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, looking at the ways in which
it grew out of jurisprudence from both legal systems and how this cross-pollination may
change the expansion of fundamental rights in a wider sense.