The general provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

Abstract:

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union provides the Union with a 'more evident' (as requested by the European Council of Cologne) framework of protection of the individuals before the public authorities within the European context, after more than thirty years (since the Stauder Case) of full confidence in the leading role played by the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Communities.

This new normative catalogue of fundamental rights (included the so called 'aspirational fundamental rights') implies one more instrument of protection which has to find its own place with regard to the protection afforded by the national Constitutions and the international agreements on human rights, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights, which already are a privileged source of inspiration for Court of Justice of the European Communities.

It is the main objective of the General Provisions of the Charter to clarify which is that place and the relationship with those other levels of protection as managed by their supreme interpreters (i.e., the Constitutional -or Supreme- Courts of the Member States of the Union and the European Court of Human Rights).