The Accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms: : A Threat to the Specific Characteristics of the European Union and Union Law?

Several reasons speak in favour of the accession of the European Union to the European Convention. But the submission of the EU to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights could jeopardise the specific characteristics of the EU and of EU law. In order to take the specific institutional features of the EU into account whilst recognising the competence of the Court of Strasbourg, the draft agreement provides for amendments to the judicial system of the ECHR. However, it is not certain that the co-respondent and prior involvement mechanisms, like they have been foreseen in the draft agreement, will fulfil this aim. Moreover, EU law and ECHR law do not follow the same logic. Thus, there is a risk that the submission of the EU to the judicial system of the ECHR will alter EU law. And yet nothing has been pro-vided for in the draft agreement to avoid such a risk. To ensure that the external review of compatibility with human rights provi-sions does not undermine the specific characteristics of EU law, you can only hope that the Strasbourg judiciary will allow the Un-ion a margin of appreciation