The current challenges of human rights protection go beyond the borders of individual states and require the commitment of the international community as a whole. The sovereign national state model is no longer sufficient for solving these problems. There exists a dynamic relationship between governments and their international obligations, therefore adopting a holistic approach to the implementation of human rights strategies requires a detailed understanding of the instruments and the way they interact with national legal instruments.

The European Union is a good example of how human rights protection is implemented in a multi-layered environment. Today the European Union has its own human rights catalogue, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which follows the general principles of human rights protection and policies of implementation, and it is thereby a key stakeholder of human rights in Europe. Its role is not limited to within the borders of the European Union.

This book is concerned with the internal dimension of human rights law in the European Union. It analyses the historical circumstances under which human rights law developed in the European Union and provides a legal analysis of the principles of human rights and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and how this relates to case law and to the international obligations of EU Member States. It also considers the constitutional traditions of human rights protection common to the Member States, which provide legitimacy to the Court of Justice decisions on human rights.