The Competences of the Union

Author(s):  
Theodore Konstadinides

The object of this chapter is to examine the way in which competences are designed and delineated in EU law at the vertical level between the EU and the Member States and discuss their salient features. Over the years, EU competences have expanded, although not as meteorically as one may think. To alleviate concerns among Member States about the impact of EU competence enlargement upon national legal systems, a number of principles were designed to limit the powers of the EU. Having said that, there is hardly today an area of regulation in which the EU does not play an active part—from trade and energy to sport and fundamental rights protection.

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-49
Author(s):  
Mihaela Vrabie

This article aims to determine when the national authorities have the obligation to comply with EU fundamental rights, in the framework of administrative procedures carried out in the EU Member States. It also aims to determine the legal remedies available at national level in the context of judicial review in case of violation, by the national authorities, of EU fundamental rights guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU or as general principles of EU law. To this end, this study explains the impact of the legally binding EU Charter on public administration of the Member States and the field of application of the EU Charter at national level. The article also deals with the distinction between EU fundamental rights as primary EU law guaranteed by the EU Charter and EU fundamental rights as general principles of EU law. With reference to the judicial remedies available to national courts, the study outlines the effects of EU law (primacy of EU law, direct effect, direct application) in relation to the EU fundamental rights and the measures that can be adopted by the national courts when the action of the national administrative authorities is not compatible with EU fundamental rights. Finally, the article presents the most important findings concerning judicial protection of EU fundamental rights at the national level, especially from the perspective of the right to an effective remedy and to a fair trial stipulated by Article 47 of the EU Charter.  


Author(s):  
Aida TORRES PÉREZ

Abstract This contribution will tackle a central question for the architecture of fundamental rights protection in the EU: can we envision a Charter that fully applies to the Member States, even beyond the limits of its scope of application? To improve our understanding of the boundaries of the Charter and the potential for further expansion, I will examine the legal avenues through which the CJEU has extended the scope of application of EU fundamental rights in fields of state powers. While the latent pull of citizenship towards a more expansive application of the Charter has not been fully realized, the principle of effective judicial protection (Article 19(1) TEU) has recently shown potential for protection under EU law beyond the boundaries of the Charter. As will be argued, effective judicial protection may well become a doorway for full application of the Charter to the Member States. While such an outcome might currently seem politically unsound, I contend that a progressive case-by-case expansion of the applicability of the Charter to the Member States would be welcome from the standpoint of a robust notion of the rule of law in the EU.


Author(s):  
András Jakab

This chapter argues that the most promising way to conceptualize the values of European constitutionalism in a judicially enforceable manner is through a creative reinterpretation of Article 51(1) EU CFR. It asserts that in order to create a fully fledged value community which benefits all its citizens equally, the CFR should become fully applicable in every case in its own right—even in purely domestic cases in domestic courts and even in the absence of a systemic failure of fundamental rights protection at the domestic level. This would mean that judicial review would be introduced across Europe via the supremacy of EU law. This judicial review would be decentralized in the sense that local courts could exercise it, but its unified application would be ensured by the preliminary procedure. The EU could thus become a ‘community of fundamental rights’ with nobody left behind.


Author(s):  
Tamás Szabados

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is gradually undergoing multilevel transformation in the European Union (EU). Hardening of the initially voluntary CSR approach of the EU is progressively taking place in an interaction between the law of the Member States and EU law. Domestic solutions can serve as a model for EU legislation. In this progress, the Non-Financial Reporting Directive, granting considerable flexibility both to companies and the Member States, can indeed be seen as an intermediate stage and it is expected that, under the impact of human rights due diligence requirements recently imposed on companies by Member States, more substantive obligations will also be introduced at an EU level in the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 104-124
Author(s):  
Joana Covelo de Abreu

Under today’s European constitutional demands, effective judicial protection sets the tone concerning potential jurisdictional instruments able to act as constitutionality control mechanisms. Inter-jurisdictionality stands for different and complementary jurisdictional systems living togetherin the same space and it aims to understand how their reflexive interactions can be maintained to promote effective judicial protection. Both the infringement procedure and the preliminary ruling act as constitutional controls. The first allows the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to evaluate the incompatibility of national solutions/omissions with EU law but, to meet its full effectiveness, widening legitimate parties needs to be considered as well. Also, validity preliminary rulings act as a constitutional control in proceedings relating to individuals – national judges should be aware of their referring obligations to the CJEU. There are voices amongst European academia that advocate a new constitutional procedure to promote fundamental rights’ protection. However, the main formulas highlighted rely on solutions tested on the national level which can compromise their efficacy. We perceive an inter-jurisdictional paradigm as the proper approach since it will allowthe promotion of effective judicial protection at a constitutional level as a new EU dogmatically thought phenomenon. This is to ensure judicial integration can be perceived as a reality, engaged in pursuing the future of the EU.


This book addresses the relationship between EU law and new technologies. Its aim is to address two groups of questions. First, how does EU law approach the relation between science and regulation and what part do conceptions of risk play in this approach; is there a distinctive character to EU law in this domain? And second, what challenges do new technologies pose for the EU internal market and for fundamental principles of EU law, including fundamental rights? Do new technologies represent potential new barriers to freedom of movement? How are EU instruments used to direct and orientate EU policy on new technologies, and how do new technologies shape EU policy, including—but not only—EU policy on privacy and data protection? The book is organized into two parts. The first part, ‘The EU, Scientific Risk, and Regulatory Design’, addresses some of the more horizontal questions, helping us to unpack and to understand the EU’s approach to the regulation of scientific/technological risk and the impact on regulatory design of the close link between the regulation of technology and the internal market. The second part, ‘EU Law and New Technologies—Challenge and Response’, uses different policy fields to exemplify the different ways in which technology and EU policy interact, by posing new regulatory challenges (data protection; internet governance), and by shaping the regulatory response to new challenges (the use of technology for border management and migration control).


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4 (1)) ◽  
pp. 55-73
Author(s):  
Joanna Ryszka

The principle of proportionality in the EU legal order applies, among others, to actions taken by Member States in the situation where they are willing to use, permitted by the EU law, derogation from its provisions, in particular – in the area of internal market freedoms. Derogation from those freedoms will not be justified if it is not absolutely necessary. National regulations must therefore be proportionate to the objective that these restrictions are to protect. With respect to the free movement of persons, as an example of these goals, the protection of fundamental rights could be mentioned. It is vitally important for the realization of an internal market due to the existence of interesting interactions occurring between them and specific ways of applying the principle of proportionality when they collide with each other.


Author(s):  
Elspeth Berry ◽  
Matthew J. Homewood ◽  
Barbara Bogusz

Titles in the Complete series combine extracts from a wide range of primary materials with clear explanatory text to provide readers with a complete introductory resource. This chapter begins with a brief history of human rights protection in Europe, including the separate role of the Council of Europe and the ECHR, as well as that of the EU and EU law. It then discusses the development of human rights protection by the EU; the need for human rights protection against the EU and its Member States; the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU; the enforcement of human rights in EU law; and the possibility of EU accession to the ECHR.


Author(s):  
Cremona Marise

This chapter examines the EU’s robust and complex treaty-making. The first section deals with the EU’s treaty-making capacity from the perspective of EU law, and then of international treaty practice. It examines the ways in which international treaty-making practice has accommodated EU participation in bilateral and in multilateral agreements. The second section discusses the legal effects of treaties concluded by the EU, first as regards the EU legal order, including their enforcement and interpretation by the Court of Justice of the European Union and the legal effects of mixed agreements. A discussion of the impact of EU treaty-making on the powers of the Member States follows: through the doctrines of exclusivity and pre-emption, the impact of EU law on treaties concluded by the Member States, and finally EU treaty-making from the perspective of international responsibility.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 210-246
Author(s):  
Louise HALLESKOV STORGAARD

AbstractThis article offers a perspective on how the objective of a strong and coherent European protection standard pursued by the fundamental rights amendments of the Lisbon Treaty can be achieved, as it proposes a discursive pluralistic framework to understand and guide the relationship between the EU Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. It is argued that this framework – which is suggested as an alternative to the EU law approach to the Strasbourg system applied by the CJEU in Opinion 2/13 and its Charter-based case law – has a firm doctrinal, case law and normative basis. The article ends by addressing three of the most pertinent challenges to European fundamental rights protection through the prism of the proposed framework.


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