In Supporting Role Cast: The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights

Abstract

Summary The article deals with the Slovak Constitutional Court’s approach to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as a potential source of constitutional review. It analyses selected SCC decisions in order to evaluate and generalise the SCC attitude. The main focus is on defining the constitutional status of the EU Charter within the Slovak constitutional order. The up-to-date practice of the Constitutional Court is associated with an inevitable confusion when formally the Charter belongs among the sources of constitutional review, but by applying the doctrine of self-restriction, the SCC uses it only in a subsidiary way or in the form of a soft interpretation instrument to support its reasoning.