HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER

one of the fundamental values of the European Union, which is evident not only from the number of cases in this matter but also early secondary legislation. The progressive narrative of human rights protection in the EU is valid, supported by strong arguments. However, the fact that from the very beginning of the idea of a joint European Project through its negation based on European politics, the Schuman declaration, and the EPC, the human rights aspect was always present, and at no point by any of the community members was it objected in full. It supports the ultimate conclusion that the EU was always about human rights, even when it did not explicitly mention the catalogue of them in the founding treaties. The EU never went against the values of protecting human rights, and in 1990, it started its own human rights documents and bodies. It is not easy to evaluate whether the decision was the right one. On the one hand, there is a certain degree of sympathy for the need to limit the scope of the treaties to the minimum, especially since we are elaborating on treaties creating one of the first modern international organisations. The treaties are already exhaustively challenging to negotiate. There is a possibility that the attempt to include human rights in the provision and even the potential accession to the ECHR system would vastly prolong these negotiations and potentially prevent the formation of the EEC. On the contrary , these obstacles are purely theoretical since the matter was only adequately discussed after the failure of the EPC in the 1950s. If these matters had been brought up, the provision, even symbolic ones, could have been passed without a legion of issues. After all, most states already agreed to the ECHR system and its human rights obligations, and there is no evidence that it would be an issue if it were part of the EEC. However, even when human rights were not explicitly mentioned, that does not mean that in the debates about the future of the EEC, human rights would still need to be addressed. By the time the EEC was established, all member states (with the exception of France) had already joined the ECHR. As Gráinne de Búrca has argued, the silence of the founding treaties likely reflected an implicit recognition of the Council of Europe’s role in safeguarding human rights in Europe. 54 The founding documents anticipated further amendments to the treaties. 55 Regardless of the opinion on this matter, it would be hard to justify that the European Project (first European Community on Coal and Steel, then European Economic Community, and now European Union) was ever not about human rights because if we consider the fact that one of the supporting ideas at the beginning was the idea of prevention of the future armed endeavours between the European nations 54 DE BÚRCA, Gráinne. The Road Not Taken: The European Union as a Global Human Rights Actor. In The American Journal of International Law [online]. 2011, vol. 105, no. 4, p. 669 [cit. 2024-06-15]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5305/amerjintelaw.105.4.0649. 55 Ibid, p. 670.

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