Origins and context of the EU Charter

The European Council meeting in Cologne in June 1999 appointed a working group, self-denominated the ‘Convention’, comprising representatives of three groups: the Member State Governments (15), the European Parliament (16), national parliaments (30) and the Commission (1), to formulate an EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, to be presented to the European Council in Nice in December 2000. On the basis of this draft document, it was intended that the European Parliament, Commission and Council would proclaim a European Charter of Fundamental Rights. It was left to the Nice European Council to decide whether and, if so, how the Charter should be integrated into the Treaties.

The story of fundamental rights in the EU did not begin with the Cologne Summit of June 1999 and the work of the Convention in 1999–2000. There is a long history of attempts in the EC to promote fundamental rights. Fundamental rights in the EU legal order have been developed by the European Court of Justice as a result of the sensitivity of national constitutional courts to respect for fundamental rights protected by national legal orders of the EU Member States. The need for general principles of EU law to include protection for fundamental rights is driven by the implications for national constitutional protection of such rights of the doctrine of supremacy of EU law.