A Carta dos Direitos Fundamentais da União Europeia

Abstract

The coming into force of the Fundamental Rights Charter of the European Union brings about a substantial change in the protection of fundamental rights in the national and in the community level in the EU member-countries. This article shows such alterations in the wider context of the EU's constitutionalization and European- identity-building processes and also discusses the relationships between EU law and national constitutional law in the Charter's field of application. SUMMARY: 1. The coming into force of the Charter in the framework of the European Union's constitutionalization; 2. A substantial change in the European system of rights; 3. A common space of rights for all of the EU: the inefficacy of the Protocol for the Charter's application in the United Kingdom and Poland; 4. The Rights Charter and the development of an European identity; 5. The Charter's projection over the European legal order and over member-state legal orders; 5.1. The dialectic interaction between the EU's legal order and the State legal orders in the field of rights; 5.2. The Charter's normative projection; References.