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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.
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.
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.
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.