Strengthening the Charter’s Role in the Fight for the Rule of Law in the EU: The Cases of JudicialIndependence and Party Financing

Dimitry Kochenov, John Morijn*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

This article discusses how the application the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights contributes to the fight for the rule of law in the EU. After outlining the connections between the two it focuses on two examples of how the Charter could and should play a more significant role in upholding the rule of law. As to Member State-level rule of law breakdowns, we demonstrate that the Charter has either been missing in the shadow of Article 19(1) of the Treaty on European Union or threatened to undermine the fight for the rule of law when the principle of judicial independence was reduced to Article 47 Charter standing alone. As to supranational level rule of law issues, where the Charter’s applicability under Article 51 CFR is uncontroversial, we show that it has nonetheless so far been applied to a problematically limited extent. This is particularly clear with regard to party-financing at EU-level. This file offers a case in point to show how taking the Charter seriously could make a significant difference in protecting the rule of law in the EU.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)759-780
Number of pages22
JournalEuropean Public Law
Volume27
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2021

Keywords

  • Article 7 teu
  • Charter of fundamental rights of the european union
  • Judicial independence
  • Party financing
  • Rule of law

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