Resumen de A Constitutional moment: : Acceding to the ECHR (or not)

Leonard Besselink, Mónica Claes, Jan-Herman Reestman

• The Court of Justice of the European Union has spoken: accession to the European Convention on Human Rights on the terms specified in the Draft Accession Agreement incompatible with Union law as it stands and as established by the Court of Justice. Few really expected this outcome - all the more since the Court had put its stamp on some essential elements in the negotiations, by an unprecedented and increasingly explicit institutional intervention in the lead-up to the draft accession agreement - or should that have been a warning? The decision whether to accede to the EECHRis not for the Court to determine. This is ultimately for the member states to decide, either qua members of the Council as the EEUtreaty-making power, or member states as masters of the EEUTreaties in the framework of the amendment procedure - this follows from Article 218(11) TTFEU(though the European Parliament and Commission will inevitably be involved in both instances)