EU Accession to the ECHR, Review of Z. Luca, ‘EU Accession to the ECHR — The Commission Proposal for Negotiating Directives’, 17 MJ 2 (2010), p. 206–209
| Author | Sionaidh Douglas-Scott |
| DOI | 10.1177/1023263X1201900302 |
| Published date | 01 September 2012 |
| Date | 01 September 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Article Reviews |
348 19 MJ 3 (2012)
ARTICLE REVIEWS
Commission Proposal for Negotiati ng Directives’, 17 MJ 2 (2010), p.206–209.
Sionaidh Douglas-Scott*
In 2010, Zoe Luca wrote a short commentary i n the Maastricht Journal on the issue of
the EU’s accession to the ECHR. In par ticular, she expressed concern about the secrecy
of the Commission’s Proposal for Negotiating Direct ives for accession, and the opaque
nature of the discussions, which made it di cult to assess how much progress had been
made. She also identi ed two areas of part icular di culty. e rst of these was the
perceived need for a co-respondent mechanism, by mea ns of which both the EU and the
Member State concerned may be joined as part ies to proceedings before the Strasbourg
Court. e second concerned the competence of the Court of Justice of t he European
Union to rule on the compatibility of EU act s with funda mental rights, if it has not
previously had a chance to do so. Both of thes e had already been agged as crucial in the
negotiating d irectives1 proposed by the Commission, as wel l as highlighted in the Lisbon
Treaty protocols dealing with ac cession.2
Two years on, we may review wha t progress has b een made on thi s important proj ect
of accession. If some progress has been made on co-respondent arra ngements and CJEU
prior participation, lack of tra nsparency remains a problem, and the at titude of some
Member States has proved a cause for concern. In 2010, the Council of Europe (COE)
Committee of Mini sters authorized its Steering Committee for Human R ights (CDDH)
to dra , in collaboration with the EU, a legal instr ument for the accession of the EU to
* Professor of Europea n and Human Rights L aw, University of Oxford.
1 See Council of t he European Union, Note on Dr a Council Dec ision authorising t he Commission
to negotiate the Acce ssion Agreement of the Eu ropean Union to the Europe an Convention for the
protection of Human R ights and Funda mental Freedoms (ECH R) Co-respondent mechan ism
(Paragraph 10 of the Negot iating direct ives) (2June 2010), doc. 10569/10.
2 e issue of a co-respondent mec hanism was rai sed in Article1(b) of the Protocol 8 to t he Lisbon Treaty
which requires t he accession agreement to make prov ision: ‘[…] in particul ar with regard to: […] the
mechanisms necessary to ensure that proceedings by non-Member States and individual applications
are correct ly addressed to Member States a nd/or the Union as appropriate.’
3 CM/Del/De c (2010) 1085, of 26May 2010.
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