The Draft Constitution and Human Rights Protection in European Union

er States, and in connection with we have mentioned about the Member States’ above, the principles and resource applied to the Member States derived from the Council of Europe. Thus a EU standard could be established by transform a rating comparison of the members’ legal systems to the case-law in ECJ in respect for human rights.

In this context, the ECHR serves as only an alternative source of knowledge, because based on the gradually increased legal resource- from the common principles applied to the member states to the legislation of EU institutions and the case-law developed by the ECJ itself as well as the synthetically Charter of Fundamental Rights, the ECJ has been enabled to deliberate and judge cases relying on sufficient recourses existed in EU body in connection with human rights without referring to the ECHR. In a similar case, Cinéthèque, The Court made a move forward: It expressed the normative statement about respect for human rights as a condition for lawfulness as an institutional duty: it is the duty of this Court to ensure the observance of fundamental rights in the field of Community law, as stated by the Court. In thi

s way, the Court of Union gradually enables itself to break in the field of excising more power in human rights protection.

Based upon three aspects above, it is reasonable to be aware of, that before the draft Constitution for Europe materialized, it already existed two de facto mechanisms supervising and providing legal protection for human rights in the scope of European Union. One of them is the Council of Europe based in Strasbourg, which provides basic standard of human rights via the Convention and other guideline mechanisms , and oversees its enforcement with the judiciary body: the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR hereafter). The other system, however, was gradually established during the progress of EU, which consists of two legislative bodies in Members States and Union level respectively, and the ECJ as the juridical instrument. The two systems, however, are not definitely distinguished with each other, but overlap and work in coordination. Because on the one hand, the fifteen European countries made commitment to respect the ECHR, and agreed to submit themselves to the jurisdiction of ECtHR in Strasbourg, in spite of that they have transferred some sovereign competence to Brussels. On the other hand, the ECtHR still plays a role as an effective co director of the ECHR legal regime, which maintain its unofficial partnership with the ECJ, whose own doctrine obliges it to honor the ECtHR whenever the Convention is relevant. Moreover, the EU is still lacking in ample legislation with respect to human rights. The main work of ECJ is to ensure that EU law is not interpreted and applied differently in Member State. However, the current circumstances might be changed according to the new Constitution for Europe.

3 the draft Constitution with the incorporated Charter

One of the most outstanding accomplishments of the draft Constitution is incorporation of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the Constitution. The Charter, in its three years’ life, has obtained appreciations from all around though it has not yet legal binding force. In order to analyze the effect of the Charter on the EU human rights system, we first examine at first the Charter itself, then based on the analyze of legal status of the Charter, we concentrate

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