04 November 2024
Enhancing Fundamental Rights Protection
The EU should ensure fundamental rights’ compatibility of EU legislation before its adoption. To that effect, we propose three distinct paths to improve the EU control mechanisms. Whilst mechanisms to ensure quality control do exist, primarily in the form of impact assessments, these mostly remain a merely formal exercise. Henceforth, we suggest strengthening the ex ante fundamental rights review of EU legislation through enhanced involvement of FRA in the legislative process. Continue reading >>
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02 November 2024
Stuck Between Unity and Diversity
The role of the EU Charter in disputes concerning fundamental rights standards between the EU and Member States has been characterized by ambiguity ever since the Charter’s inception. As the EU deepens integration of Member States to effectively face the challenges ahead, I advocate for a pluralistic interpretation of Article 53 of the Charter that allows for a greater degree of accommodation of national particularities. In that way, one would reduce constitutional tensions and find that there may be unity in diversity after all. Continue reading >>
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01 November 2024
Reconciling National and European Constitutional Legalities
In light of the increasingly established autonomous European constitutional legality, national constitutional courts are now compelled to reconsider their roles. Through a progressive expansion of its direct applicability by national ordinary judges, the Charter of Fundamental Rights risks fostering the marginalization of national constitutional courts. I argue that the solution lies in a highly differentiated consolidation of constitutional legalities that integrates and embraces the unique roles of national constitutional courts in their respective systems of adjudication. Continue reading >>
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01 November 2024
Pouring New Wine into Old Wineskins
The three seemingly trivial observations that follow inform three substantive proposals regarding the protection of fundamental rights within the EU. To address the challenges faced by national constitutional courts and the CJEU, it is essential to leverage existing procedural tools within domestic legal systems. Additionally, expanding the applicability of these versatile tools and considering a structural revision of the judicial bodies may facilitate the creation of hybrid entities that could collaboratively address major issues, thereby steering constitutional developments in the EU. Continue reading >>
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31 October 2024
Fundamental Rights Come Off the Bench
In 2014, the European Court of Justice clearly prioritised the EU’s position on the unity and effectiveness of EU law over the protection of fundamental rights (Opinion 2/13). Ten years later, in October 2024, a judgment pitting football against the media seems to have turned the tables. In Real Madrid vs Le Monde, the Court held that excessive defamation damages may breach the freedom of the press and trigger the public policy exception. This is a significant shift, prioritising fundamental rights protection over the traditional objective of seamless judicial cooperation across the EU. Continue reading >>
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31 October 2024
Why the EU Charter Matters
This blog post argues that the most interesting aspect of the Charter of Fundamental Rights at the moment is its impact on remedies in national law. Almost 15 years since its entry into force, it is not unusual to meet domestic lawyers and judges who will voice doubts as to whether the Charter really matters in practice. Yet, through the right to an effective remedy under Article 47, the Charter opens up domestic law for new (or modified) remedies, thus placing national procedural autonomy under greater constraint than it was from the principles of effectiveness and equivalence. Continue reading >>
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30 October 2024
Whither, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights
So, has the Charter come of age, now that it is nearing its quarter century, and has been binding in force for nearly 15 of those years. No longer is the Charter a “sleeping beauty”, and no longer are fundamental rights mere epiphenomena in EU law – offshoots framed in the amorphous category of “general principles of law” – creations of the EU’s earlier desire for legitimacy in its quest for greater integration. The EU Charter contains the essence of a common language, a currency that all can understand. And the EU is better with it than without it. Continue reading >>
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29 October 2024
Managing Migration the Italian Way
The Italy-Albania deal provides a new, some say innovative, approach to externalization in migration procedures. It differs from the current EU toolbox, raising issues related to these differences and the treatment of procedural rights. Where these issues arise and how they will be litigated nationally and/or in front of the ECJ is unclear but will shape migration discourses beyond Italy. Continue reading >>23 October 2024
Wie die Grundrechte-Charta unbegleitete Minderjährige vor dem europäischen Verschiebebahnhof schützt
Die Anfang Juni 2024 im Amtsblatt veröffentlichten neuen Regelungen über das Gemeinsame Europäische Asylsystem finden ab 2026 Anwendung. Weiterhin zentral bleibt dabei die Frage, welcher Mitgliedstaat für die Bearbeitung des Asylantrags zuständig ist. In Hinblick auf unbegleitete Minderjährige verstößt ein Zuständigkeitsbestimmungsverfahren, das regelhaft die Möglichkeit der Überstellung in den Erstregistrierungsstaat prüft, gegen die kinderrechtlichen Garantien der EU-Grundrechtecharta. Continue reading >>
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04 September 2024