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Un bilan de la Charte doit également prendre en compte son interaction avec les autres textes internationaux de protection des droits fondamentaux. La Convention occupe une place centrale à cet égard, car chaque fois que les juges nationaux appliquent le droit de l’Union, ils doivent le faire dans le respect de la Convention. D’où l’importance de la cohérence entre la Convention et la Charte, car in fine, le contrôle du respect des droits fondamentaux dans un cas concret se fait à Strasbourg. Eu égard à cette réalité, le législateur de l’Union a instauré un double contrôle de cohérence entre la Charte et la Convention : le premier, interne à l’Union, s’exerce sur la base de l’article 52(3) de la Charte ; le second, qui le complète, est appelé à s’exercer à travers le contrôle externe par la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme, prévu par l’article 6(2) TUE. S’agissant du contenu des droits fondamentaux, le contrôle interne de cohérence a bien fonctionné. On ne peut pas en dire autant s’agissant de la méthodologie des droits. Dans la jurisprudence de la Cour de justice de l’UE, en effet, tout se passe comme si l’article 52(3) de la Charte ne concernait que le contenu des droits, à l’exclusion de leur méthodologie. Aussi cette jurisprudence génère-t-elle des divergences méthodologiques qui conduisent tantôt à des déficits de protection par rapport à la Convention, tantôt à la confusion juridique. Ces défaillances du contrôle interne rendent nécessaire la mise en place du contrôle externe.

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.

Erstaunlicherweise ist über die „Tragweite" von Grundrechten bis heute recht wenig geschrieben worden. Der Begriff wird in Art. 52 Abs. 3 der EU-Grundrechtecharta verwendet und verweist auf einen Bestandteil der Rechte aus der Europaischen Menschenrechtskonvention, die von der Charta ubemommen wurden. Seine Verwendung in diesem Zusammenhang bietet Anlass fur Überlegungen über die Stellung der Grundrechte im Unionsrecht, welche mit dem Lissabonner Vertrag und vor allem der Grundrechtecharta eine neue Dimension erhalten haben dürfte.

Despite some inevitable complexities, the Luxembourg case-law on procedural rights in criminal proceedings seems to be developing into an area of greater convergence with the Strasbourg case-law, thereby facilitating the job of domestic courts.

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.