Judging the Charter
The Charter in judicial practise with a special focus on the case of protection of refugees and asylum seekers
Charter Articles formulate a range of rights and principles that are to be respected by the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union and by Member States when they are implementing Union law. For the concrete interpretation of rights and principles and specifically for the question of their applicability in a specific case guidance by the CJEU is of crucial importance. However, even if the Court refers to the Charter in many of its cases, only in few of them Charter rights are decisive for the final decision. And only very few cases are suitable for providing support in the difficult question of applicability.
In this section of the Website we therefor seek to provide access to those cases that we identified as relevant in terms of a referral to the Charter and for questions at the national level in this regard. Cases are linked to the relevant Articles of the Charter (not necessarily to all that are mentioned in the judgement), relevant legal documents as well as with exercises, case studies and other training materials.
The Case Law data-base does not aim at being exhaustive but rather selective. It provides information on the facts of the cases, the relevance of the decision, the legal question(s) at stake and the court decision. In some cases it also provides a critical assessment – this can be based on academic articles, commentaries or the personal opinion of the very person, who drafted the case summary.