Die EU-Grundrechtecharta als "living instrument"

Lea Norta analyses the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union as a living instrument and advances the thesis that its substantive guarantees are open to an intertemporal interpretation, the scope of which nevertheless remains constrained by methodological, institutional, and competence-based limits. At the centre of the study lies the question of the extent to which the Charter, since acquiring binding force as primary EU law in 2009, is capable of responding to social, technological, environmental, and legal developments within the European multilevel system. The theoretical framework draws on the European Court of Human Rights' living-instrument doctrine, the concept of constitutional evolution, the distinction between static and dynamic interpretation, and the relationship between normativity and social reality. The author demonstrates that static and dynamic interpretation do not constitute autonomous methods of interpretation but rather normative meta-principles that determine the temporal point of reference for interpretation. On this basis, she develops the concept of intertemporal openness as a graduated model of fundamental-rights interpretation. The study concludes that the Charter of Fundamental Rights is, in principle, capable of further development. Such development, however, depends largely on the degree of integration achieved in the relevant field. The more extensively a field is shaped by EU law, and the more the effective enforcement of fundamental guarantees enshrined in primary law requires further development, the more readily the Court of Justice of the European Union may dynamically specify fundamental-rights standards. By contrast, where primary law provides only limited competences, leaves political discretion to the Member States, or where no sufficiently consolidated European consensus exists, the constitutional allocation of powers calls for judicial restraint. Dynamic interpretation of fundamental rights must therefore not serve to anticipate political integration or to effect a conceale