22
March
2019

The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights - Use and added value in EU Member States

Member States have an explicit duty to promote the Charter’s application. These country-sheets support that effort by giving examples of the Charter’s use and highlighting how it adds value.

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is the EU’s bill of human rights. It contains 50 articles with substantive rights and principles, followed by four articles with general provisions. Member States have a duty to respect the rights and observe the principles of the Charter whenever they are acting within the scope of binding EU law. Where the Charter provisions are sufficiently precise and unconditional, they can have a direct effect at the national level – for instance in national courtrooms. Charter provisions that are ‘principles’ can only be invoked before a court if implemented by legislative or executive acts. 

Examples of the Charter’s use are provided below in Charter-country-sheets for each Member State. In addition, a link is provided to the national case law which has a direct reference to the Charter. More country-specific information (including examples of experts, training institutions and university courses) is made available on request at charter@fra.europa.eu.

Austria flagAustria

Belgium flagBelgium

Bulgarian flagBulgaria

Croatian flagCroatia

Cypriot flagCyprus

Czechia flagCzechia

Denmark flagDenmark

Estonia flagEstonia

Finland flagFinland

France flagFrance

Germany flagGermany

Greek flagGreece

Hungary flagHungary

Ireland flagIreland

Italy flagItaly

Latvia flagLatvia

Lithuania flagLithuania

Luxembourg flagLuxembourg

Malta flagMalta

Netherlands flagNetherlands

Poland flagPoland

Portugal flagPortugal

Romania flagRomania

Slovakia flagSlovakia

Slovenia flagSlovenia

Spain flagSpain

Sweden flagSweden

United Kingdom flagUnited Kingdom