The European Union and Fundamental Rights

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Sionaidh Douglas-Scott

Published:

2018

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

The twenty-first century European Union proclaims its respect for fundamental rights. Indeed, in an era of concern for human rights, it would seem strange if the European Union (EU) did not engage with them. Yet, the EU’s concern for fundamental rights has at least two very different historical sources. First, the Internal Market project has always lain at the heart of the Union and it requires the removal of national obstacles to integration—even possibly those predicated upon fundamental rights. Consequently, the EU’s own focus on fundamental rights constitutes a response to the thinly veiled threat of national courts invoking their own human rights standards to review EU law. On the other hand, the second source relates to the Union’s earliest days, as the Coal and Steel Community and later the European Economic Community (EEC), and as a clear response to the horrors of the early/mid-twentieth century. The objective from the outset was to stop yet another deadly, destructive war in Europe. As Klaus Günther has written, ‘We realise that the European history of human rights is written in blood. And it goes on …’. But perpetual peace in Europe did not merely entail economic integration as an end to conflict—it

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