Home -> Law Blog Directory -> International Law Blogs -> EU Law Blog

International Law

: EU Law Blog

Commission Report on Monitoring of Compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights

By Bartolus

The Commission has recently published an informative report entitled "Report on the practical operation of the methodology for a systematic and rigorous monitoring of compliance with the Charter of fundamental rights" (COM (2009) 0205).

The report is really quite a gold mine of information and references. It rewards reading.

For example, the report shows how issues of fundamental rights crop up in very different areas of EU law, such as chemical regulations, agricultural law or customs law. But, the report warns, it is important for other institutions to be mindful of the need to comply with fundamental rights. It describes two options available to the Commission should the Council and European Parliament fail to respect fundamental rights in the exercise of their legislative powers:

As a last resort, as it already indicated in the 2005 Communication, the Commission is ready to contemplate an annulment action: strategically, the best utilisation of the annulment action would be where the legislator has made specific amendments to the Commission's proposal, which the Commission considers clearly violate fundamental rights. In the case of such specific amendments, where they can be separated from the rest of the instrument, an annulment action is the better course. The offending provisions can be singled out, while preserving from attack the other provisions of the legislative act which might represent valuable progress that the Commission would not wish to sacrifice.
Where, on the other hand, the legislator has departed significantly from the Commission proposal in terms of fundamental rights protection so that the centre of gravity of the proposal as far as that protection is concerned has shifted, the withdrawal of the proposal could be the preferred option. The long standing position of the Commission has been that its right of initiative also implies the right to withdraw its proposal and, this, in cases where amendments made by the legislator to the Commission's proposal lead either to a manifest illegality or to a serious distortion of the Commission proposal.

The Commission's report refers extensively to the influential report of Johannes Voggenhuber MEP of 2007 on compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Commission's legislative proposals: methodology for systematic and rigorous monitoring (PE 378.675v02-00).

For previous posts on fundamental rights see here and here.

Full post as published by EU Law Blog on May 11, 2009 (boomark / email).