CYIL vol. 8 (2017)

CYIL 8 ȍ2017Ȏ THE CHARTER OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS OF THE EUROPEAN UNION … The subsequent case law of the Court of Justice partially corrected the excessive abstractness of the Fransson ruling and confirmed that there are still some autonomous domains of the Member States where EU standards need not be accepted. The Court of Justice brought some light to the unclear Fransson findings and offered (a bit complicated but still applicable) criteria of testing whether there is some connection between national law applied in the case and EU law. 35 In the case Siragusa, the Court of Justice stated that: ‘In order to determine whether national legislation involves the implementation of EU law for the purposes of Article 51 of the Charter, some of the points to be determined are whether that legislation is intended to implement a provision of EU law; the nature of that legislation, and whether it pursues objectives other than those covered by EU law, even if it is capable of indirectly affecting EU law; and also whether there are specific rules of EU law on the matter or capable of affecting it […]’ 36 This point brought a certain explanation to the concept ‘acting within the scope EU law’ given by the Fransson judgment. The applicability of the Charter still requires that certain matter falls within the ‘specific’ scope of EU law. But to make this conclusion, one needs to find a specific interconnection between national law (decision) and specific provisions of EU law. Spaventa speaks about the necessity to find out some ‘demonstrated proximity’ between national conduct and EU law. 37 The Court concluded that applicability of the Charter to the acts of Member States necessarily presupposes the existence of a certain degree of connection between the EU law and relevant national law measures that goes beyond the mere similarity of areas concerned or indirect impact of one area to another. 38 In paragraph 24 of the Siragusa judgment, the required connection with EU law is defined in both positive and negative terms. The positive definition implies the requirement of a certain degree of connection between the national legal rule and EU law. The negative definition refines this connection which must go beyond a simple resemblance of the fields of the legislation and beyond any indirect influence (everything is connected with everything) existing between national law and EU law. 39 The question remains, whether the abovementioned “Siragusa” criteria needs to be fulfilled in a cumulative manner, or it is enough that some of these features will be met in a specific 35 PIRKER, B. (2014). Case C-206/13 Siragusa: A Further Piece for the Åkerberg Fransson Jigsaw Puzzle. European law blog . Available at http://europeanlawblog.eu/?p=2253. Accessed 28 April 2016. 36 Siragusa (C-206/13, EU:C:2014:126, para 25, emphasis added). 37 SPAVENTA, E., The interpretation of Article 51 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: the dilemma of stricter or broader application of the Charter to national measures . European Parliament, 2016, p. 21. 38 As the Court stated later on in the Hernández case: ‘the mere fact that a national measure comes within an area in which the European Union has powers cannot bring it within the scope of EU law, and, therefore, cannot render the Charter applicable […]’, Julian Hernández and Others (C-198/13, EU:C:2014:2055, para 36). 39 In this context, it is possible to refer to the judgment in Iida (Iida, C-40/11, EU:C:2012:691, para 78-82), in which the Court of Justice refused to examine the compatibility of the national measure with the Charter on the basis that the objective of the national legislation concerned had no connection with the objectives of EU law. However, this approach in the case law of the Court of Justice indicates that the interpretation of Article 51(1) of the Charter does not have fixed limits even in relative terms. It is not clear whether the criterion of the objective of national legislation confronted with the objectives of EU law will apply in every single case in order to reach the conclusion that there is a connection with the implementation of EU law; nor is it clear whether the implications of a national law or measure on EU law will be examined in every case. And how should we consider a situation in which a Member State does not implement EU law, but its law or a measure nonetheless follows the fulfilment of EU objectives?

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