Human Rights in the European Union - Essay Example

If human rights are not respected, there will be no peace or development, and there would be peace and stability in countries that respect human rights. Modern constitutions have a responsibility of protecting human rights. In most constitutional arrangements, the task of protecting human rights is given to the judiciary and it involves the evaluation of actions of the government. Human rights protection may be restricted to the reviewing of laws by the judiciary. Nonetheless, independently, human rights set essential boundaries where democratic administrations must work.

The European Union pursues this convention. The Union deems itself to be developed on the basis of democracy, freedom, equality, respect for human worthiness, law, and appreciation of human rights. Therefore, the European Union gives a basis for Human rights. The foundation of Human rights in the European legal order includes: distilling general principles protecting fundamental rights from the common constitutional traditions of the Member States by the European court; the bill of rights was facilitated by another bill of rights: the European Convention on Human Rights.

This bill of rights was later complemented by an inner bill of rights, written distinctively for the European Union: the Charter of Fundamental Rights.  Understanding the development of European amalgamation as a progression of mounting critical role of human rights in the legal order of Europe is particularly alluring: human rights as being extremely crucial for the union. It has been said a lot of times: human rights were not included in the initial Treaties. They have been considered as indispensable since the late 1960s till now.

The acceptance of human rights as a pivotal part of any society that wants to develop has appeared to have gained momentum in the recent times. An outstanding evidence of this is the European Councils’ resolution at a summit in Cologne (Andreangeli, 111). It stated that a human rights charter should be made for the Union because it is its basis for being legitimate. This paper will look at how Human Rights are focal to the legal order of the European Union. The treaties made by the European Union in the 1950s were concerned with people as a whole rather than individuals.

During that time, the main objective of the Union was to create a foundation for the coming together of European people who were for a long period divided by disagreements and war through earlier incorporation of their economy. On the other hand, two fundamental rights preserved in Europe, and conference for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and Universal Declaration of Human Rights were included in the treaties and gave elements that were central to the process of integration.

These included: ban on discrimination based on sex or nationality and freedom of movement by the self-employed or ant worker. The treaty requirements acted as the foundation for vital case-law and legislation in areas of equality, employment opportunities and the encouragement of equality in gender in all walks of life. In addition, the European took a tremendous move in combining democratic ideas and human rights into its policies that were external with implementation of the Treaty on the European Union in November 1993.

The implementation of the Treaty of Amsterdam in May 1999 is a sign of another noteworthy step towards adding human rights into the legal order