Romain
Pierre
M2PEA
Web
dossier audit: The legal impact of the inclusion of the
Charter of Fundamental Rights
into
the EU Constitutional Treaty for social protection
This web review reports some analyses of the Constitutional Treaty and in particular the status of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and explores the political debate around its scope of application. Although it is often referred to it as one of the most important progresses established by EU draft Constitutional Treaty, regarding national practices and law, this dossier aims to show how differently it will affect some of the member states’ legislations. It also focuses on the potential consequences of the inclusion of this text on the «law-making» process at the European Union level and gives clues on the actual benefits people from the EU might acquire through this charter. The study is quite complete and provides a full range of opinions. The author took specific care of the translations and complementary information, offering an interesting perspective on this topic.
A) Form
The web review
is divided into seven parts, plus an introduction and a conclusion. At the end
of the conclusion, after a brief lexicon, Emilie Meyer provides us with all the
reference texts.
TEXT 1 «The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights», part II
of the Constitutional Treaty
TEXT 2 « Lettre sur le projet de
Constitution de l'Union européenne
TEXT 3 « La Constitution Européenne : Une
conception des droits purement libérale
TEXT 4 « Une suggestion pour
améliorer la Constitution européenne
TEXT 5 «EU constitutional treaty -The trade union
movement and the European constitution
TEXT 6 « CONSTITUTION EUROPEENNE :
UN « PAS EN AVANT » SOCIAL ?
TEXT 7 «Draft EU Constitution - new law
via the back door ?»
For each
article, the author quotes its title, its author, a brief explanation
concerning the source, its date of publication, a summary of its content in
both languages and then a personal commentary. Moreover, she provides us with a
translation for each article and links to access the web sites. There are no
pictures, but sometimes the author uses colours in the titles to focus on
important things.
B) Contents
The different
articles hereby presented mostly deal with the consequences of the inclusion
of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of
the European Union into the EU draft Constitutional Treaty and shows strongly
opposed opinions, covering the whole scope of the dispute.
Firstly, the
author presents the text of the charter itself, and recalls the six titles
under which the text is being built, which are dignity, freedom, equality,
solidarity, citizenship and justice, and the importance of such a text in
bridging European member states’ traditions and practices.
The second
text is a letter from the French National Consultative Commission of Human
Rights, addressed to French PM Raffarin in July 2003. It actually gives a
typically French analysis of the charter, pointing out the loopholes and
shortfalls of the text compared to the social protection already effective in
France.
The third text
is an interview of a professor of Public Law at the University of Toulouse by
the French daily l’Humanité, insisting on the fact that the Charter of
Fundamental Rights of the European Union does not bring additional protection
to the people of European Union and is highly liberal.
The fourth
article, downloaded from a website, «Project Syndicate», shows a quite
different point of view and focuses on the importance of the economic
consequences of the inclusion of the charter into the draft if it is to be
adopted.
The fifth text
is very interesting. It is an article which has been ordered from a top-ranking
King’s College professor by the United Kingdom Trade Union Congress to
determine whether this text would improve social rights, which the author seems
to be convinced of.
The sixth text
is an article from a Belgian weekly and tackles the topic of the future of the
Welfare State model since the charter, and the whole draft, obey a much more
liberal logic than that of the rights already anchored in most national
legislations.
The seventh
and last text shows the opinion of a
lawyers organization, represented across the whole of Europe. It is quite
interesting and insists on the potential impact of the chart on national
legislations, specifically through case-law.
Critical
analysis
A) Form
positive
point: This web review has a lexicon which provides the basic
vocabulary needed to understand the topic. The page setting is good and sober in its presentation, which is really
appropriate for the topic.
Negative
point: All the text references make this web review a little heavy
to handle for the reader. More colours in the first part would have made it
more attractive. Pictures or caricatures might have been better and,
incidentally, favoured a more pleasant reading experience. Indeed, this web
review is particularly long and a small disconnection from time to time,
through pictures or cartoons, would have been relaxing for the reader.
B) Contents
This study is
very complete and interesting and provides valuable information on the Charter
of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
Positive
points: the author chose to present the topic using formally and essentially
different sources, which gives a wide approach of this topic. It recalls the
internal point of view of different groups: workers, scholars as well as
institutional actors. Moreover the articles chosen are well documented and show
the subjective opinion of member states, according to their traditions and
practices in this area.
Negative
points: there might be too many articles, since most of them are quite dense.
Though the author tried to present diverging opinions from different countries,
it might have been interesting to refer to the attitudes of the so-called
«small countries» on this topic. Finally, I would like to add that the author
could have been a little more synthetic when summarising and maybe could have
developed the commentaries she made even if they are well done.
This Research Dossier tackles a very
interesting but complex issue. It could be criticized for its form because it
sometimes appears a little boring. In the contents, Emilie Meyer focuses on the
point of view of the oldest and most powerful countries of the EU, and thus the
small countries’ interests are somewhat under-represented.
But it’s a
very serious piece of work with especially a wide and complete choice in the
sources: politically and geographically the study covers the whole range of the
debate.