Divisible, Contingent and Parochial? : The instrumentality of EU fundamental rights

Summary, in English

Human rights are meant to be universal, indivisible, and inalienable. They are legal norms that claim to reflect urgent moral concerns, and to protect human beings by mere virtue of their humanity. As such they are held to be universal, in that they apply to all human beings regardless of their background and nationality; they are inalienable, in that all human beings are born with them and they cannot be taken away from them; and they are indivisible, in that they cannot be considered in isolation, but must be understood to be the sum of entitlements which human beings require in order that their humanity be respected.
This chapter argues that EU fundamental rights meet none of these criteria. They are not universal, in that they may reserved only to certain classes of persons, they are not indivisible, in that particular individuals may be entitled to protection of some EU fundamental rights, but not others, and they are not inalienable, in that the extent of their protection may be contingent on whether such protection furthers the achievement of EU objectives. EU fundamental rights, it is argued in this chapter, are instrumental – they are means by which the unity, primacy and efficacy of EU law is secured.

• Author: Eduardo Gill-Pedro
• Editor: Silvério Rocha-Cunha; Marco Baptista Martins; Rafael Vasques
• Department/s: Department of Law
• Publishing year: 2019-11
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Os Direitos Humanos por um fio? : Perspetivas transdisciplinares em torno dos direitos humanos em tempos difíceis
• Document type: Book chapter
• Publisher: Edições Humus
• Topic: Law
• Keywords: EU law; Fundamental Rights; Legal Theory; Human Rights; Instrumentality; EU-rött; Mänskliga rättigheter
• Status: Published
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISBN: 9789897554186