Legal aspects of accession of EU at ECHR
The European Union (EU) became the guardian of the rights of Europeans. From a treaty-based entity the European Union became a supranational system based on democracy and where the treaties and the EU human rights principle operates as constitutional law. Moreover, the law of the European Union it is without doubt a form of European Public Law based on a system of administrative and increasingly constitutional law including its own Charter of Human Rights. Into the European constitutional framework, from the second half of the last century, the political and judicial institutions of Europe have committed in creating a European constitutional order in which prevails the protection of human rights. The fundamental values belong to the European constitutional heritage, to Europe without borders and without double standards of protection. The rights declared in the constitutions must found concrete tools to render them effective. To ensure the effectiveness of the protection of human rights on our continent, the European Union’s adherence to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) is considered to be the ideal tool in the absence of a legal and formal link between the systems of Strasbourg and Luxembourg. With the Treaty of Lisbon, the expected adherence of the EU to the ECHR was, in fact, hailed as “a courageous political, cultural and legal decision.”
