The scope of the protection of fundamental rights under the EU charter

Abstract

The recognition of the legally binding value of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights has profoundly transformed the Union system of fundamental rights protection. The novelties not only concern the sources of this protection, but also the conditions for the application and interpretation of EU fundamental rights. In particular, before the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty the Court of Justice was the exclusive architect of its approach to fundamental rights, whereas in the era of the legally binding Charter is confronted with written rules on the subject. Moreover, if there is no doubt that the Lisbon Treaty has put an unprecedented emphasis on the protection and promotion of EU fundamental rights, the Member States have contextually expressed, and with equal emphasis, concerns towards an ever-increasing expansion of the scope of EU fundamental rights, at the expense of domestic standards and material competences. Against this background, the aim of this thesis is to reconstruct the scope of the protection offered (better, that should be offered) by the EU Charter. The analysis covers problems relating both to the scope of application of the Charter and to its effects. Some of the questions addressed are new, as they stem from novelties introduced by the Charter others are veritable topoi of the EU discourse on fundamental rights, which nevertheless need to be revisited in light of the new scenario just described. The leading idea is that, in order to overcome the ambiguity of the Charter on many crucial issues concerning its scope of application and effects, reliance must be made on the role assigned to EU fundamental rights by the revised Treaties. These, and the progressive evolution of the EU system of fundamental rights protection, suggest that fundamental rights are constitutive values of the EU legal order.