Politika ljudskih prava Europske Unije: razvoj i izazovi za budućnost
HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION: DEVELOPMENT AND CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE

Summary/Abstract: Responding to criticisms and discussions about the non-existence of European Union’s human rights policy, the article claims that this policy exists although it has been developing inconsistently both at the level of the Union’s internal affairs and at the level of its relations with third countries. The second key hypothesis of the article refers to the institutional implementation mechanisms of the Union’s human rights policy which, according to the author, require new positioning and better coordination. The article firstly analyses the development of the human rights policy in the Union’s internal affairs from the Stauder Case in 1969 to recent discussions on the legal force of the Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and the accession of the Union to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The second part of the article gives an overview of human rights policy development in the Union’s external relations from the Fourth Lomé Convention to the European Neighbourhood Policy. The paper ends with an analysis of the features common to the Union’s human rights policy implementation mechanisms focusing on the role of the Commission, the Parliament and the Council of the Union. The article points to the lack of institutional harmonisation using the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights as an example and sees in the establishment of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights the need to introduce changes in the implementation of the human rights policy. In a conclusion, the author identifies the complexity and fragmentation of the Union as a system on the one hand and, on the other hand, the omnipresence of human rights protection and promotion in the Union’s public policies as the key factors encumbering the control over the human rights policy implementation and the cause of its perceived deficit.

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