And one more reservation to the Charter of Fundamental Rights...

(Archives B2) At the last moment, the Czech Republic discovered some allergy to the Charter of Fundamental Rights. It thus issued in a statement (no. 52) - recorded in theFinal Act of the Treaty signed in Lisbon on December 13, four reservations.

four points

The Czech government (Christian Democrat / Green coalition) thus emphasizes that “the provisions of the Charter are addressed to the Member States only when they are implementing Union law and not when they are adopting and implementing national law independently of Union law”. He also believes that the “rights and principles (established by the Charter) must be interpreted in harmony with the said traditions”.

Finally, he says "the Charter does not reduce the scope of application of national law and does not limit any current competence of national authorities in this area". And "No provision of the Charter may be interpreted as limiting or infringing the human rights and fundamental freedoms recognised, in their respective scope, by Union law and the international conventions to which the Union or (…) the Member States…”.

Almost zero legal scope

These reservations may appear, at first glance, as a third opt-out (after the United Kingdom and Poland). But the essential difference lies in the legal value of this act, which apparently does not bind the European institutions or the Court of Justice. This text "above all confirms certain limitations set out in the Charter itself" explains a jurist who followed the negotiations of the Treaty. He is "especially for internal purposes", comments a Czech journalist, "to please the electorate of the ODS, (...) and the opposition sociale democrat said nothing, saw nothing"...

Ignition delay...

In fact, says a diplomat, the Czechs woke up very late, at the last moment. They came to see the Portuguese presidency in the last days of November with a real "opt-out". Their interlocutors kindly made them understand the lack of relevance of this approach and its lateness (it is an understatement) and directed the Czechs towards a text, more common and which does not, in fact, explain new reservations, but confirms the provisions already present in the Charter (in Articles 52 and 53) by limiting its scope.

The Czechs in reverse of their history...

If the legal scope of this declaration is therefore debatable, it leaves no less, at the level
political, a certain lack of appetite for the Charter of the country which saw the birth of one of the most original movements in Europe, the "Charter 77" of which many intellectuals were members, such as Vaclav Havel (the photo dates from November 1989 at the Lanterna Magica... we are very far today from this spirit of freedom!).

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde-