Rights for Non-Humans in EU Law

The recognition of animals and nature as potential rights holders has long been a controversial proposition within European legal discourse. However, we believe that the EU legal order is more hospitable to such recognition than one might expect. In a recent article, we argued for a rights-based reinterpretation of EU animal welfare and environmental protection laws. EU constitutional and secondary laws can be construed as entailing legal rights for non-human entities – even if these rights are not explicit the texts. We consider how the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and other EU legal acts may support a post-anthropocentric vision of Union law.

A Hohfeldian perspective

Our argument is grounded in a Hohfeldian framework: that rights exist where legal duties are owed to an intended beneficiary. Many EU legal instruments impose duties not merely in service of human interests but also with a view to protecting animals and nature, sometimes justified at least partly by the value of these entities for their own sakes. Where this is so – where non-human interests are protected for their own sake – these beneficiaries should be considered as holders of rights under EU law.

This legal pivot, from treating animals and ecosystems as objects of protection to recognizing them as subjects of law, has important implications. It challenges the conventional notion that only humans (or legal persons such as corporations) can be beneficiaries of EU rights. It also aligns with some judicial interpretations of the EU Charter.

Article 13 TFEU and the EU Charter

The Treaty of Lisbon elevated animal welfare to constitutional status through Article 13 TFEU, which obliges the EU and its Member States to “pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals” as “sentient beings.” While Article 13 is not part of the Charter, its status as a foundational Treaty provision necessarily informs the interpretation of Charter rights.

Consider the 2020 decision in Centraal Israëlitisch Consistorie van België, where the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) upheld restrictions on ritual slaughter based on animal welfare concerns. Notably, the Court weighed animal welfare against the right to religious freedom under Article 10 of the Charter. It concluded that animal interests could legitimately justify limitations on a Charter right – an implicit recognition that these interests hold constitutional weight.

But the implications are deeper still. If animal welfare can justify curtailing a fundamental right, then it must rest on a normatively significant legal basis. We believe that the weight given to animals’ interests by the CJEU implies a legal status for animals that is not merely derivative of human interests. At a minimum, it indicates that animal interests are recognized within the Charter’s normative ecosystem – even if not expressly catalogued among the rights listed.

Expanding the Charter’s material scope

That rights can be inferred from legal duties is already well-established in EU law. Courts applying the doctrine of direct effect, as developed since Van Gend en Loos, have repeatedly reaffirmed that clear, precise, and unconditional legal duties in EU law confer enforceable rights. The CJEU has applied these rights in the context of environmental law and procedural environmental rights in line with Articles 37 (environmental protection) and 47 (right to an effective remedy) of the Charter.

Logically, if legal instruments like the Habitats Directive or the Directive on the Protection of Animals Used in Experiments aim to protect animals or ecosystems at least in part for their own sakes, then these entities – not merely humans – are their intended beneficiaries. From a Charter perspective, this demands a reassessment of Articles 37 and 47, as well as the underlying assumptions about legal personhood and access to courts.

Could the right to an effective remedy in Article 47 be interpreted to include procedural standing for representatives of non-human rights holders? Could Article 52, which governs the scope and limitations of Charter rights, be deployed to balance these non-human rights against others, rather than merely weighing human rights against environmental “objectives”?

A stronger case for animal rights

The case for acknowledging implicit animal rights in the EU is currently stronger than that for rights of nature, particularly in light the acknowledgment of animal sentience in Article 13 TFEU as a reason to protect them in law. Unlike animals, which are increasingly treated as individual moral and legal subjects, ecosystems and natural entities tend to be protected as collective goods or “heritage” in EU environmental law, often without clear reference to their intrinsic or ultimate value. This asymmetry reflects deeper philosophical tensions: animal rights are typically grounded in the interests and suffering of sentient individuals, whereas rights of nature claim moral status for systems or wholes – such as rivers, forests, or biodiversity – sometimes even at the expense of individual animal interests. The EU legal framework, which remains rooted in anthropocentric rationales and individualistic rights structures, appears better suited – at least for now –to accommodating the former. However, it is significant that EU environmental protection laws such as the Birds and Habitats Directives implement international laws, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Bern Convention on the Protection of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, which do explicitly recognize the value of biodiversity and species, respectively, for their own sakes. There is therefore potential for EU law to be interpreted to recognize non-human beneficiaries of environmental obligations as legal subjects in their own right, in light of international law.

More-than-human dignity?

Whether non-human animals and other natural entities can have rights no longer a philosophical question alone. The planetary crisis and growing political momentum for the rights of nature – seen in developments from New Zealand to Colombia – have already prompted legal reforms outside the EU. Within Europe, the 2022 recognition of legal personality for Spain’s Mar Menor lagoon ecosystem may be a bellwether; new laws for the rights of nature and animals are currently under consideration in several EU countries. Moreover, laws that would explicitly grant rights to both nature and animals are broadly supported throughout the EU.

The Charter, with its commitment to human dignity, environmental protection, and justice, must be interpreted in light of this shifting normative terrain. According to a 2024 judgment from a lower court in Erfurt, Germany, rights of nature can already be derived from the EU Charter through the living-instrument doctrine. If dignity is not to allocated on the basis of species membership only, and if environmental protection is to have teeth, then the EU must move beyond a model in which rights are the exclusive preserve of Homo sapiens. To some extent, we argue, it already has. There is the potential though, for these rights to be explicitly recognized and strengthened, for instance by improving access to courts in name of non-human interests.

In conclusion, we believe that the EU’s legal order already contains the seeds of a more inclusive community of rights. How they grow will be determined by judges, lawyers and scholars as we argue about, interpret and apply the Charter and other EU laws.