The Scope and Effects of the EU Charter in the Case Law of the European Court of Justice

The chapter provides an account of the most significant judgments of the ECJ (between 2009 and 2014) on the scope and legal effects of the Charter. In particular, sections 2 and 3 focus on the review of, respectively, Union acts and national acts in light of the Charter. Attention is paid to the scope of application of the Charter and the legal effects of its provisions as grounds of validity and criteria for interpretation of Union acts, as well as parameters of compatibility of certain domestic measures with Union law. The following sections provide an overview of judgments where the ECJ has dealt with specific issues that concur to shaping the scope of application and legal effects of the Charter. These are: the relationship between the Charter and domestic standards of fundamental rights protection (section 4), the question of whether the provi- sions of the Charter have direct effect (section 5), the interpretation of Article 52(5) CFR on Charter “principles” (section 6), and Protocol No. 30 on the application of the Charter to Poland and the UK (section 7). Finally, section 8 provides some brief concluding remarks.