The Domestic Application of the European Human Rights Convention as European Community Law

Abstract

THE DEVELOPING jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Communities relating to general principles of European Community Law and its increasing reference to the European Convention on Human Rights and other sources of fundamental rights as forming an integral part of that law suggests that the European Convention may have been accommodated into the corpus of European Community law.' This communitisation of the European Convention may well endow its substantive provisions with special Community law features in relation to national law, thus radically altering the Convention's status in the domestic law of the nine member States.2 In the words of the former President of the Court of Justice of the European Communities (the Luxembourg Court): Just as Community law has become effectively established thanks to national courts, so the [European] Convention [on Human Rights] can become part of national legislation by means of the combined compulsory force of the decisions of the Court of Justice and national judgments. By interpreting Community law in the light of the Convention, the Court of Justice would place the efficacy of its decisions at the latter's disposal. Direct effect, uniformity, the primacy of community law could also help the rights safeguarded by the Convention to penetrate both into the Community and each of the member States. 3