Human & Civil Rights

Lisbon would give the EU the power to decide our human and civil rights: By making us into real EU citizens for the first time, Lisbon would give the new Union the power to decide what our rights as EU citizens are. It would do this by making the rights set out in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding in all areas of EU law, including Member States when implementing EU law(Art.6 TEU). The same Article states that the Charter“shall have the same legal value as the treaties”. This would make the 27 judges of the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg the final decider of our rights as citizens of the new Union, instead of the Irish Supreme Court or the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which decide our rights at present. If Lisbon gives the EU Court of Justice (ECJ) the power to decide what our rights are in the large area of EU law, it is likely that the Commission will in time come to propose laws to ensure their uniform application across all EU States, as has happened in the case of the other Treaties up to now.

The EU has already got a human rights competence, in that the Court of Justice can adjudicate on such rights as equality and non-discrimination under the existing Treaties. Therefore making the Charter legally binding does not extend the powers or competence of the Union as such. What Lisbon would do would be to give the ECJ a much wider range of human and civil rights to interpret and decide on, for the Charter would cover all the rights of EU citizens in the post-Lisbon Union. The Court has laid down in several court cases over the years that National Law must be applied in ways that are consistent with EU law, for the latter has supremacy in any conflict between the two. This principle must logically apply to rights issues also. ECJ judgements on rights issues would override national provisions in any case of conflict between the two.

This raises the real possibility of clashes over rights standards in sensitive areas where there are significant national differences between Member States at present: for example, the right to life, the right to strike, the right to marry and found a family, the rights of children and the elderly, rules of evidence in court, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, trial by jury, censorship law, the legalisation of hard drugs and prostitution, rights attaching to State churches, equality legislation, conscientious objection to military service, succession, property, family law, labour law. In any clash between EU citizens’ rights as laid down by the EU Court and special national provisions on rights - for example Ireland’s Abortion Protocol – it is the EU Court which would decide, for by ratifying Lisbon we wquld give it legal supremacy in this area.

Lisbon also provides for the new Union, like other European States, to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights. The EU Charter is far wider than the Convention on Human Rights. There is ample scope here for conflict between the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg over human rights jurisdiction issues.

admin @ May 22, 2008