The human rights puzzle of the euro-crisis: why massive breaches of human rights but none of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights?

Abstract

The EU rights gap: why did the sovereign debt programmes massively breach international human rights but not EU fundamental rights? Claire Kilpatrick This analysis investigates a significant and intriguing rights puzzle: why did the EU sovereign debt programmes produce findings of pervasive and substantial human rights violations before a wide range of human rights bodies but no breaches of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The analysis first demonstrates the evidence for the claim that the sovereign debt programmes massively breached international human rights by examining the UN human rights treaty bodies and the European Social Charter. It considers the European Court of Human Rights as a significant exception. It then evaluates five potential explanations for the contrast between international human rights and EU fundamental rights. These are (1) An absence of EU fundamental rights challenges (2) EU legal and judicial source blockages (3) Differences in human rights and fundamental claims (4) Differences between courts and human rights bodies (5) the dominance of the ECtHR as a source for EU fundamental rights claims.