Protecting Women’s Rights and Ensuring Gender Equality

De Jure ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Valcheva ◽  

In recent decades, the international community and the European Union have paid increasing attention to ensuring a sufficiently good level of protection of women’s rights. To achieve this level, international and European bodies and institutions should draw up and adopt various acts and instruments aimed at ensuring the fundamental principle of gender equality. For example, in European Union law, the principle of equality between men and women is reflected in Articles 2 and 3 (3) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU). These provisions explicitly state that the EU is based on certain values, including equality, and specifically promote equality between men and women. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) also provides for a separate provision which entrusts the Community with the task, in all its activities, of striving to eliminate inequalities and to promote equality between men and women (Article 8 of the TFEU). Next, Article 21 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights prohibits all forms of discrimination, including on the grounds of sex. In addition to the provisions of primary law, the EU seeks to ensure the principle under analysis by adopting strategies and programs of different scope and content. The Member States of the European Union, including the Republic of Bulgaria, also actively promote respect for the principle of gender equality. Explicit guarantees for its provision are contained in the legislation of the Member States, including at the constitutional level. Despite the measures taken on a global, European and national scale, the unequal treatment of women around the world persists. Most often, differences in the treatment of men and women are observed in the social sphere, employment and pay, healthcare, access to education, political, economic and social activities. The existence of these differences leads to the conclusion that it is necessary for the international community, the European Union and its Member States to adopt and implement even more targeted actions, policies and measures to ensure adequate protection of women’s rights.

2019 ◽  
pp. 16-51
Author(s):  
Anniek de Ruijter

This book looks at the impact of the expanding power of the EU in terms of fundamental rights and values. The current chapter lays down the framework for this analysis. Law did not always have a central role to play in the context of medicine and health. The role of law grew after the Second Word War and the Nuremberg Doctors Trials (1947), in which preventing the repetition of atrocities that were committed in the name of medicine became a guidepost for future law regarding patients’ rights and bioethics. In the period after the War, across the EU Member States, health law developed as a legal discipline in which a balance was struck in medicine and public health between law, bioethics, and fundamental rights. The role of EU fundamental rights protections in the context of public health and health care developed in relation with the growth of multilevel governance and litigation (national, international, Council of Europe, and European Union). For the analysis here, this chapter develops an EU rights and values framework that goes beyond the strictly legal and allows for a ‘normative language’ that takes into consideration fundamental rights as an expression of important shared values in the context of the European Union. The perspective of EU fundamental rights and values can demonstrate possible tensions caused by EU health policy: implications in terms of fundamental rights can show how highly sensitive national policy issues may be affected by the Member States’ participation in EU policymaking activities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 694-707
Author(s):  
Justine N. Stefanelli

In its preliminary ruling in Haqbin, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU or Court) ruled for the first time on whether the EU Reception Conditions Directive 2013/33 (RCD) prohibits Member States from withdrawing material reception conditions in the event of a breach of the rules of accommodation centers, or in the context of violent behavior within those centers. In holding in the negative, the CJEU affirmed the important role played by fundamental rights in the EU's asylum system.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 85-92
Author(s):  
Gábor Kemény ◽  
Michal Vít

The aim of the paper is to introduce the legal misfits between the standards of human rights as stated by the European Union and the Council of Europe and practical day to day experience related to EU member states. For this purpose, the article focuses on political and legal assessment of the so-called pushbacks at the Greek-Turkish external border and introduces the influencing factors, such as the various interpretation of the legislation, differences in the organisational structure and values. Authors concluded that these factors are endangering the fulfilment of the fundamental rights and the efficiency of the border protection thus the security of the EU and its member states.


EU Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 929-994
Author(s):  
Paul Craig ◽  
Gráinne de Búrca

All books in this flagship series contain carefully selected substantial extracts from key cases, legislation, and academic debate, providing students with a stand-alone resource. This chapter discusses EU anti-discrimination law, which, over the past decade and a half, has expanded significantly to cover a wide range of grounds and contexts. In addition to requiring equal treatment for women and men, the Treaty provides legislative competence to combat discrimination on a range of grounds. The Charter of Fundamental Rights, which has a chapter devoted to equality, has been incorporated into the EU Treaties. Article 21 of the Charter prohibits discrimination on any ground. Articles 8 and 10 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) contain horizontal clauses requiring the EU to promote equality between men and women, and to combat discrimination based on certain grounds, namely sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age, or sexual orientation in all of its policies and activities. The UK version contains a further section analysing issues concerning EU discrimination law and the UK post-Brexit.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
Edyta Anna Krzysztofik

The process of European integration has introduced the Member States into a new legal reality. The existing exclusivity in the area of competence implementation has been replaced by a two-stage model of their exercise. The Member States, when conferring part of their supervisory powers, did not specify the scope of their own competences. The so-called European clauses were analysed in the Constitutions of selected Member States, which showed that they define the recipient of the conferral and, in a non-uniform manner, specify the subject of the conferral.  The analysis of the indicated provisions clearly shows that the Constitutions of the Member States exclude full conferral of competences on the European Union. There is no specification of the scope of competences that may be conferred. However, this issue was addressed by Constitutional Courts of the Member States. The article refers to the judgements of the German Federal Constitutional Court and the Polish Constitutional Court. It has been shown that they equate exclusive competences of the Member States with the scope of the concept of constitutional identity reduced to basic principles of the state. The Court of Justice of the European Union analysed the scope of competences of both entities. The article presents the analysis of judgements on: entries in Civil Registry regarding transcription of surnames, the issue of recognition of same-sex marriages, reform of the judiciary system in Poland, and the application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the areas that do not fall under EU competence. Regardless of the division of competences, the EU is bound by the principle of respect for national identity of the Member States, including constitutional identity. It both obligates the EU to respect the exclusive competences of the Member States and is a premise restricting the achievement of EU objectives.


Araucaria ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 131-154
Author(s):  
Angela Di Stasi1

Starting from an overview on the current crisis in the European integration process, caused inter alia by the emergence of forms of “souverainisms”, the following paper focuses on the peculiarity of the European Union phenomenon and on the effects of the gradual enlargement of the European competences with respect to the classical concept of sovereignty. In this view, some observations will be made around the subtle limit which separates the EU competence from the one of its member States. For this purpose, the Charter of fundamental rights of the EU and the issue of the field of its application towards the member States is adopted as a privileged observation point.


Author(s):  
Luchtman Michiel

The Court of Justice has stated that ‘the founding treaties of the EU, unlike ordinary international treaties, established a new legal order, possessing its own institutions, for the benefit of which the Member States thereof have limited their sovereign rights, in ever wider fields, and the subjects of which comprise not only those States but also their nationals’. The wording highlights the differences between the European legal order (the European Union (EU) and its Member States) and the international legal order. Whereas international law is regarded as a matter between states, the Court’s characterisation of the European Union expressly makes room for individuals, EU citizens to be more precise. In line with this, Article 3(2) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) states that the EU shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration, and the prevention and combating of crime.


2007 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 133-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier de Schutter

It has been argued in many places, and in different forms, that the establishment between the EU Member States of an internal market, and now of an area of freedom, security and justice, requires the European Union to legislate in the field of fundamental rights, either in order to avoid a form of regulatory competition between the Member States or in order to ensure mutual trust allowing for mutual cooperation between judicial, police and administrative national authorities. ‘Negative integration’, in the form of the lowering of barriers to the movement of goods, services, persons and capital, or in the form of mutual recognition of judicial decisions or exchange of information between national authorities, should thus be followed with, or compensated by, ‘positive integration’, in the form of the setting of common standards applicable throughout the EU Member States. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, moreover, provides the baseline from which to act, since it represents a set of values which all the Member States have agreed to consider as fundamental. The question (so it would seem) is now that of implementing the Charter, by using the legal bases provided for in the treaties to the fullest extent possible.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-144
Author(s):  
Touko Johannes Sinisalo

AbstractOn 28 March 2018, the European Commission published a press release stating that there is a plan to revoke all.eu domains owned by the United Kingdom’s individuals and entities due to Britain’s exit from the European Union. The article highlights issues related to the process of the UK leaving the EU, gives examples from other fields of the Union law and the national law of the Member States which have experienced similar situations and also points out the fundamental rights that the Commission needs to comply with. The basics of domain names are also partially covered to inform the reader about what domain names are based on and of existing regulations in the field.


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