On Tuesday 19 March 2024 from 16:00 to 17:30 CET, the Hertie School Centre for Fundamental Rights is hosting a research event entitled 'The soul of Europe in the balance? Subsidiarity and human rights in the EU and the ECHR'. The research presentation will be given by Andreas Føllesdal (University of Oslo) and will be chaired by Joseph Finnerty (Hertie School). Here is a short description of the event:
'What is at stake if the EU accedes to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and becomes subject its Court – as required by the Treaty on European Union Article 6? We might expect no conflicts between the human rights protection by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU): The EU is committed to a Charter of Fundamental Rights which requires the CJEU to abide by ECHR standards and ECtHR jurisprudence (52.3). The ECtHR’s ‘Bosphorus Doctrine’ assumes that states comply with the ECHR when they implement EU legislation. And the term ‘subsidiarity’ appears in the treaties of both. Yet the CJEU objected to the draft accession treaty, and the ECtHR appears to foresee some such conflicts.
The presentation argues that appeals to subsidiarity will not alleviate the tensions, because the two treaties as interpreted by their courts have different primary objectives. Arguments from subsidiarity do not indicate which of those objectives to privilege in order to harmonize the treaties. Important value laden choices remain concerning how to ‘balance’ and order the various valuable objectives. It seems ill advised to leave those choices to any one of the international courts.'
You can register here. The registration deadline is 11 March 2024.
