HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER

FOREWORD This volume gathers ten best articles written by students enrolled in the Master of Laws Programme at the Faculty of Law, Charles University, who attended the elective course “Human Rights in the European Constitutional Order” during the academic year 2023/2024. Over two semesters the class explored the layered architecture of fundamental rights protection in Europe: primary law values and competences, the Charter, the Court of Justice’s evolving jurisprudence, the Union’s relationship with the Council of Europe, and a range of human rights principles such as the principle of human dignity and equality, especially as they apply to vulnerable groups. The course welcomed several notable international scholars, including Christopher McCrudden, Moritz Jesse, Darinka Piqani, and Saša Gajin. Students were asked to select a concrete problem, trace its constitutional foundations, evaluate the relevant secondary legislation and case law, and offer a critical appraisal. The articles cover a range of topics related to the protection of human rights in European constitutional order. To speak with a single narrative voice, the articles are arranged around the image of a traveller moving through Europe’s legal landscape. The sequence traces “a right-holder’s journey”. It opens with the Union’s founding promise and closes with the last judicial refuge. Between those poles each chapter marks a stage on the road – from the ideals of integration, across perilous borders, through work, family life and equality, to the courthouse where rights are finally vindicated. In a time when countless people risk everything to reach the EU and see it as a haven of legality and dignity, this organising thread feels especially apt. The opening essay places our traveller at the Union’s symbolic point of departure. Retracing debates from the Schuman Declaration to Lisbon, Georgia Hejduková demonstrates that human rights rhetoric was not a late adornment but a silent engine of integration. Having boarded the European vessel, the traveller encounters competing notions of dignity. This contribution by Václav Lipš and Marek Švajda dissects landmark judgments to uncover two rival conceptions of human dignity and proposes criteria for mediating them. Next the reader arrives at the Charter checkpoint. The article by Markéta Macáková examines whether the EU’s Charter is merely a symbolic declaration or a practical legal instrument. It traces the Charter’s evolution, evaluates its real-world impact – especially through CJEU case-law – and discusses unresolved challenges. Even a well equipped Charter cannot function in isolation. In subsequent article Tomáš Kaňka tracks the external safety belt the Union still seeks by analysing the new version of draft EU accession to ECHR agreement to see where it meets Luxembourg’s demands and where new frictions lurk. The journey reaches its most precarious moment: the border. Helena Šmolková critiques the EU’s 2024 New Pact on Migration and Asylum for embedding a “legal fiction of non-entry”, under which migrants physically present at external borders are

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