Eu Accession

European Law Summative Essay: EU Accession

It has long been considered as practical that in order to enhance the protection of human rights, the EU should accede to the ECHR. The initiation of the draft accession was to encompass the EU’s underlying concern for human rights as a part of European cultural and political custom. Accession would further quash criticisms highlighting the esteemed double standard that lays its foundations, surrounding the fact that the EU requires accession of all Member States but not of itself. In addiction such a provision would ease the situations in which individuals find themselves when faced by possible breaches of ECHR by EU constitutions, as at present, unless EU law has been implemented by some Member State act, there is no possible action by the ECHR.

The European Court of Justice’s opinion on EU accession to the European Court of Human Rights gives rise to major political ramifications. The court concluded that the accession agreement was not compatible with EU law. After negotiations in the case of Besselink an agreement was reached on how the EU and EU law, could be integrated to comply with the mechanism for the protection of European human rights. This agreement, made provision for the involvement of the EU institutions in all cases where, an application to the Strasbourg court alleged that a provision of EU law was incompatible with the ECHR. The result of the agreement was an attempt to set up a “preliminary reference downward” from the Strasbourg Court to the CJEU. The main objective of this draft was clearly to close the supposed human rights gap. In giving the ECHR jurisdiction in cases to which the EU is involved, this would therefore assure that the decisions made by the ECHR would become binding on EU institutions (including the CJEU).

The European Court of Justice dismissed the terms within the draft, claiming that it was not congruous with EU law based on several factors. The ECJ points out that...