Charter of Fundamental Rights of the
European Union
The preamble of the Charter
Minibook published by the European Union
containing the text of the Charter
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of
the European Union is a document enshrin-
ing certain fundamental rights.
The wording of the document has been
agreed at ministerial level and has been in-
corporated into the draft Constitution for
Europe. However, the draft constitution was
rejected by referendums in France and the
Netherlands. The text was also incorported in
the later Treaty of Lisbon but Ireland rejec-
ted this in a referendum. Thus technically the
Charter does not have legal force.
Origin
The European Court of Justice decided in
1996 that
the treaties establishing the
European Community do not empower it to
accede to the European Convention on Hu-
man Rights, this despite all EC/EU member
states being signatories to the Convention
(Opinion 2/94 "Accession by the Community
to the European Convention for the Protec-
tion of Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms" of 28 March 1996).
Following this,
the Cologne European
Council (3/4 June 1999) entrusted the task of
drafting the Charter to a Convention.[1] The
Convention held its constituent meeting in
December 1999 and adopted the draft on 2
October 2000. The Biarritz European Council
(13/14 October 2000) unanimously approved
the draft and forwarded it to the European
Parliament and the European Commission.
The European Parliament gave its agree-
ment on 14 November 2000 and the Commis-
sion on 6 December 2000. The Presidents of
the European Parliament, the Council and
the Commission signed and proclaimed the
Charter on behalf of their institutions on 7
December 2000 in Nice. Thus the aforemen-
tioned three institutions of the European
Union (Council, Commission, and Parliament)
decided that the Charter is the appropriate
format (for the moment) of presenting the
fundamental principles of human rights for
the Union.
Status
As it stands, the Charter is not a treaty, con-
stitutional, or legal document, and