EU judges oppose accession of EU to ECHR (van: UK Human Rights Blog)
by David Hart QC Opinion of CJEU, 18 December 2014 – read O pinion Well, here’s a thing. The EU top court in Luxembourg has decided that it is somehow against the EU treaties for it to defer in specific instances to the other European top dog, the ECtHR in Strasbourg. Accession of the EU to the ECHR has been a very slow-burn process, with the Commission starting things off in 1979 (sic). The breakthrough, or so it appeared at the time, was the entry into force of Article 6 of the Lisbon Treaty of European Union , in December 2009. This (Art.6(2)) makes it a treaty obligation that the EU “shall accede to the ECHR”. Nice and simple then? No, not exactly, when you look at the extremely complex Draft Agreement on Accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights , concluded in April 2013- my post here . This seeks to make the adjustments to both the EU and ECHR institutions enabling a non-state organisation such as th...