The EU's accession to the European Convention on Human Rights – one of the options opened up by the Lisbon treaty – could lead to conflict between courts, according to Françoise Tulkens, a Belgian judge at the European Court of Human rights.
If unanimous agreement emerges among member states to accede to the convention, the result could be that an EU-appointed judge would sit at the European Court of Human Rights to hear cases related to EU law. It would also entitle the European Court of Human Rights to rule on EU law, and allow citizens to bring cases if they believed, for instance, that a European Commission decision violated their human rights.
But European citizens would benefit from having both the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights able to hear cases on human rights, Tulkens said in an interview with European Voice.
“We should be cautious and have as much contact as possible between the two courts. We have to look at each others' case law,” she said.
And while the implementation of the Lisbon treaty's Charter on Fundamental Rights would also broaden the scope for both courts to rule on human rights issues, this did not mean member states would be forced to bring in abortion or gay marriage, she pointed out.
“Neither the charter nor the convention can say to a state to do this or that. We can just tell them not to violate one of the principles of the convention,” she said.
Tulkens sees the charter as a mechanism to raise the standard of human rights in the EU, thereby reducing the need for citizens to take their case to court. “The advantage of the charter is that it combines civil and political rights and social and cultural rights,” she said.
Commitment
Commission President José Manuel Barroso expressed the hope in early October that “our commitment to human rights would culminate as soon as possible in the Union's accession as a full member to the European Convention on Human Rights”.
Spain, which takes over the EU presidency in January, is understood to favour progress in this direction.
