Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR) enshrines certain political, social, and economic rights for European Union (EU) citizens and residents into EU law. It was drafted by the European Convention and solemnly proclaimed on 7 December 2000 by the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission. However, its then legal status was uncertain and it did not have full legal effect until the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon on 1 December 2009. Under the Charter, the European Union must act and legislate consistently with the Charter and the EU's courts will strike down legislation adopted by the EU's institutions that contravenes it. The Charter applies to the Institutions of the European Union and its member states when implementing European Union law. The Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (Treaty of Rome) did not include any reference to fundamental or human rights. The EEC Treaty was written a few years after the failure of the European Defence Community Treaty and the European Political Community Treaty. The latter treaty had included rights provisions and Craig and de Búrca argue that, in light of that failure, the drafters of the EEC Treaty wished to eschew any implicitly political elements. However, the idea that the purely economic end of the new EEC Treaty would be unlikely to have any implications for fundamental rights was soon to be tested. Soon after the entry into force of the EEC Treaty, the Community established itself as a major political entity with policy ramifications beyond its economic aims. In 1964, the European Court of Justice handed down its decision in Costa v ENEL, in which the Court decided that Union law should take precedence over conflicting national law. This meant that national governments could not escape what they had agreed to at a European level by enacting conflicting domestic measures, but it also potentially meant that the EEC legislator could legislate unhindered by the restrictions imposed by fundamental rights provisions enshrined in the constitutions of member states. This issue came to a head in 1970 in the Internationale Handelsgesellschaft case when a German court ruled that a piece of EEC legislation infringed the German Basic Law. On a reference from the German court, the ECJ ruled that whilst the application of Union law could not depend on its consistency with national constitutions, fundamental rights did form an 'integral part of the general principles of law' and that inconsistency with fundamental rights could form the basis of a successful challenge to a European law. In ruling as it did in Internationale Handelsgesellschaft the ECJ had in effect created a doctrine of unwritten rights which bound the Community institutions. While the court's fundamental rights jurisprudence was approved by the institutions in 1977 and a statement to that effect was inserted into the Maastricht Treaty it was only in 1999 that the European Council formally went about the initiating the process of drafting a codified catalogue of fundamental rights for the EU. In 1999 the European Council proposed that a 'body composed of representatives of the Heads of State and Government and of the President of the Commission as well as of members of the European Parliament and national parliaments' should be formed to draft a fundamental rights charter. On being constituted in December of that year the 'body' entitled itself the European Convention. The Convention adopted the draft on 2 October 2000 and it was solemnly proclaimed by the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission on 7 December 2000. It was at the same time, however, decided to defer making a decision on the Charter's legal status. However, it did come with the political weight of having been approved by three powerful institutions and as such was regularly cited by the ECJ as a source of fundamental rights. A modified Charter formed part of the defunct European Constitution (2004). After that treaty's failure, its replacement, the Lisbon Treaty (2007), also gave force to the Charter albeit by referencing it as an independent document rather than by incorporating it into the treaty itself. However, both the version included in the Constitution and the one referenced in the Lisbon Treaty were amended versions of the Charter.