Human Rights Policy, Law-Making and Judicial Interpretation
Egle Dagilyte[1]
Since Van Gend en Loos and Costa, the Court of Justice (CJEU) was many times criticised for being too progressive in interpreting European law by favouring European integration and disregarding national interests of the Member States. However, we must not forget that the task given for the Court is usually more difficult where law is left ambiguous by political and law-making actors (the Member States or the European institutions).
The aim of this article is to assess by analysing case law whether the Court feels it has been given a stronger mandate for pro-European interpretation with coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty and the legally binding Charter. To this end, the question of progressive interpretation will be raised in the light of recent human rights cases relating to the general principle of equality (C-555/07 Kücükdeveci, C-236/09 Test-Achats), custody of children (C-400/10 PPU McB), third-country nationals (C-578/08 Chakroun, the Zambrano trilogy, C‑411/10 NS), the right to privacy (C‑92/09 and C‑93/09 Schecke) and the right to effective judicial protection for legal persons (C-279/09 DEB).
The author hopes to convince the reader that the CJEU does stay within the powers given to it by the recently amended Treaties and does not interfere in Member States’ competences in the areas that EU law does not touch upon.
(214 words)
[1] Egle Dagilyte is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Buckinghamshire New University and a PhD researcher at Kingʼs College London School of Law. Email: egle.dagilyte@bucks.ac.uk.
