Human Rights Monitoring Institute presents an analytical study “The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in Lithuania: Challenges, Prospects and Implications for Strategic Litigation”.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which came into force in 2009, is a truly powerful instrument, bringing together not only the basic civil, political, economic and social rights that were previously fragmented in the European Convention on Human Rights, but also progressive rights, such as the right to data protection and environmental protection.
Despite the fact that the Charter offers additional legal remedies at both national and European level and has a lot of potential, it is still not used enough in Lithuania. Many legal practitioners, as well as representatives of civil society organisations, are still not sufficiently aware of the Charter’s potential or consider it to be an “additional” right, and so this important document often remains on the margins of litigation, including strategic litigation.
For these reasons, an analytical study of Lithuanian legal practice in the application of the Charter has been carried out to identify examples of the circumstances in which the Charter has been applied, as well as gaps and prospects for its strategic application. The period 2020-2024 was chosen for the study as a representative period covering both global and regional issues, such as the global COVID-19 pandemic and the migration crisis, which have led to a number of human rights cases respectively. The study revealed that the Charter was applied in less than 1% of all cases during this period. This extremely low percentage of application signals possible gaps in the application of the Charter, as illustrated by the examples of specific areas: in the area of migration, the Charter was applied in only 3% of cases during the period under review, and in the area of possible discrimination, in 5%.
This study provides a detailed analysis of the practice of applying the provisions of the Charter, discussing why its potential is not being fully exploited and the challenges it poses for its application. It also provides recommendations on how lawyers and civil society organisations can better use the Charter in the context of strategic litigation to ensure that it is more effective and that the Charter is better integrated into human rights protection.
We kindly invite you to take a look at the analytical study we have carried out – you can find it here.
