Opinion 2/13 on EU accession to the ECHR: looking for the silver lining

Catherine Barnard, Trinity College, Cambridge

Introduction

Opinion 2/13 is a judgment for lawyers, not politicians, albeit one with major political ramifications. It engages in a detailed legal analysis of the relevant provisions of the Draft Accession Agreement (DAA), as well as key principles of EU law. This does not always make it an easy read. Others have helpfully explained the Opinion (see the Editorial comments in (2015) 52 Common Market Law Review 1); a number have been have been highly critical of it (eg Douglas-Scott, Peers, Lock). I want to see whether it is possible to adopt a more positive reading of the Opinion. My remarks focus on three points:

·         Was there a failure to see the wood for the trees in the negotiations?

·         Was Opinion 2/13 really a case of judicial vanity?

·         What are the effects of Opinion 2/13 on relations between the CJEU and the European Court of Human Rights?

Was there a failure to see the wood for the trees in the negotiations?

The submissions of the Member States and the AG’s Opinion focused on the content of the Draft Accession Agreement: are the various clauses of the agreement compatible with EU law? But I think the Court felt that the focus on the nuts and bolts of the DAA meant that the negotiators failed to look at the bigger picture, namely (1) that the EU is not a state; and (2) that EU law has special characteristics (the language of Article 1 of Protocol 8[1]) which had not been sufficiently accommodated by the DAA.

In other words, the DAA focused on the state of the soft furnishings of the house – the carpets and curtains - rather than on the structural soundness of the entire edifice. But the Court was much more concerned with the edifice rather than the soft furnishings. This is why it devoted a substantial part of its Opinion (paragraphs 153-177) to identifying the ‘specific characteristics’ of EU law which it thought risked being undermined by accession to the ECHR. It identified these specific characteristics as supremacy, direct effect, conferral of powers, institutional structure[2], as well as the principle of mutual trust[3] and fundamental rights (why so far down the list?).[4] The Court also emphasised the importance of the autonomy of EU law - that is its autonomy from both the laws of the Member States and international law.[5] The Court said that the autonomy of EU law, together with its specific characteristics, were preserved by the judicial system intended to ensure consistency and uniformity in the interpretation of EU law.[6] And the key to this system is the Article 267 TFEU preliminary reference procedure.[7] It was against this backcloth, said the Court, that the DAA had to be considered.

Having set out its stall, the Court was, I think, trying to indicate that anything in – or about - the Accession agreement which jeopardised this core contravened EU law. Putting it another way, the discussion in paragraphs 153-177 was not put there simply to teach EU lawyers to suck EU eggs; these paragraphs are integral to the logic that followed. They provided the context for the Court to consider not just the points raised by the Member States in their submissions but also the bigger constitutional picture.

This broader constitutional context also helps to explain the focus on the three substantive issues: Article 53, mutual trust and Protocol No. 16 which had featured little in the submissions and the AG’s Opinion. At first sight, it is particularly surprising that Protocol No. 16 was considered at all. It allows national courts of last resort of states signed up to the Protocol to make ‘references’ to the European Court of Human Rights for an interpretation of the Convention.[8] It was concluded after the DAA had been agreed and it has not yet been brought into force. Yet the mere existence of Protocol 16 gave the Court the opportunity to express its views on the centrality of Article 267 TFEU to the EU system and how the reference procedure might be undermined.

In other words, for the Court, the EU’s team negotiating the DAA had failed to consider this important constitutional ‘wood’, focusing too much on the ‘trees’. Addressing the concerns about the potential infringement of Article 267 TFEU, together with the issues raised about Article 53 TFEU, the principle of mutual trust and Protocol No 16, was essential before accession could take place.

Was Opinion 2/13 a case of judicial vanity?

Critics of Opinion 2/13 argue that the Court of Justice was determined to protect its supremacy at all costs. Despite the fact that all intervening Member States, the AG (with reservations), and the Presidents’ joint communication indicated support for the DAA, the Court cussedly did the opposite. Even if this narrative is correct (which I doubt - see below), I actually think there would be some justification for the Court refusing to surrender itself so absolutely to the control of a ‘higher’ court. Compared to the US Supreme Court, it is still a teenager as a court. It continues to deal with threats to its supremacy from the Constitutional Courts of the Member States. It has, more or less, successfully held off those challenges. It certainly saw off a challenge to its supremacy from the power of the UN in Kadi I.[9] There, its identification of the autonomy of EU law was largely welcomed: David was seeing off Goliath. The situation is different now. The CJEU has now assumed Goliath-like proportions. Autonomy may now be mistaken for hubris, arrogance, disdain for its sister court. However, to the Court of Justice, subordination to a ‘higher’ court might suggest the Court is not invincible. It has always been very sensitive to this possibility.

However, I am not sure that the narrative of judicial vanity is correct. After all the Court does expressly concede that EU law - and the Court of Justice - are subjecting themselves to external review.[10] It points out that:

 It is admittedly inherent in the very concept of external control that, on the one hand, the interpretation of the ECHR provided by the ECtHR would, under international law, be binding on the EU and its institutions, including the Court of Justice, and that, on the other, the interpretation by the Court of Justice of a right recognised by the ECHR would not be binding on the control mechanisms provided for by the ECHR, particularly the ECtHR, as Article 3(6) of the draft agreement provides and as is stated in paragraph 68 of the draft explanatory report.

The Court also recognises that there is an obligation on the EU to accede to the Convention. However, I think the structure of paragraphs 160-162 is telling. The emphasis is not on the obligation to accede under Article 6(2) TEU, first sentence. Rather, the Court emphasises that accession is subject to limitations: accession must ‘not affect the Union’s competences as defined in the Treaties’ (Article 6(2) TEU, second sentence), nor must it interfere with the specific characteristics of the EU (Protocol 8, protocols being of equal value to the Treaties). As the Court put it at paragraph 164:

 For the purposes of that review, it must be noted that, as is apparent from paragraphs 160 to 162 above, the conditions to which accession is subject under the Treaties are intended, particularly, to ensure that accession does not affect the specific characteristics of the EU and EU law.

This is a subtle change in emphasis but an important one. Yes, Article 6(2), first sentence, suggests an absolute obligation to accede. However, when viewed through the lens of Protocol 8 and the second sentence of Article 6(2) TEU, the Treaty provided not an absolute obligation to accede but a conditional one.[11] I think this is the line the Court took.

What are the effects of the Opinion on relations with the ECtHR?

For proponents of the thesis of CJEU vanity, the effect of the Opinion on relations with the ECtHR is disastrous. The fact that the Opinion came out just before Christmas – not a bad time to bury bad news – might support the idea that the Court of Justice had something to hide.

Again, a closer look at the judgment might refute, at least in part, this allegation. First, at no point did the Court criticise the European Court of Human Rights or its case law; its ire seems to have been directed at the EU’s negotiating team.

Second, as Peers has helpfully digested, the Court has clearly identified areas for improvement. It has thus provided a drafting ‘shopping list’ for the EU’s (new?) negotiating team. Some of these items are relatively straightforward to address. Some, especially those concerning the CFSP, mutual trust,[12] Article 53 and Protocol 16, may not be. And the logistics of renegotiating the DAA in the face of a number of intransigent states both in the EU and outside, gives considerable pause for thought.

But the fact is that the Court of Justice did not close the door on EU accession to the ECHR. Leaving it ajar, yes, but not slamming the door shut completely. And the Court of Human Rights is a sensitive institution. While its first reaction might be disappointment (see the President’s remarks on the opening of the judicial year), judicial comity will lead the judiciary in both Courts to engage – probably privately – with each other.

Conclusions

A number of commentators have been tremendously critical of the Court’s decision. Their disappointment is understandable. There was so much hope associated with accession. The effect of Opinion 2/13 is to stymie these hopes. One reading of the Opinion is that the Court did this to deliver a body blow to the ECtHR and to (re)assert the CJEU’s own supremacy. In this case the judgment is very much a political one dressed up in lawyers’ clothing. Another reading is that the Court was focused on (re)asserting the specific features of EU law, which it felt had not been adequately recognised in the negotiation process. In this case the judgment is very much a legal one.

But there may be a silver-lining. The Court of Justice has put down a marker that it thinks that it can ‘do’ human rights. It may now have to prove this. There may be more decisions like Abdida,[13] delivered by the Grand Chamber on the same day as Opinion 2/13 (discussed by Peers), where the Court adopts a pro-human rights line (sweetened by numerous references to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights). Politically this may be very important, not only to start the process of bridge building with the Court of Human Rights, but also to send out a message to its own (troublesome) constitutional courts. For what is sauce to the (CJEU) goose is also sauce for the gander of the national constitutional courts.

 

These remarks were first delivered to a seminar organised by CELS, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, 4 February 2015.

 

Barnard & Peers: chapter 9

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[1] ‘The agreement relating to the accession of the Union to the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereinafter referred to as the "European Convention") provided for in Article 6(2) of the Treaty on European Union shall make provision for preserving the specific characteristics of the Union and Union law, in particular with regard to: (a) the specific arrangements for the Union's possible participation in the control bodies of the European Convention;(b) the mechanisms necessary to ensure that proceedings by non-Member States and individual applications are correctly addressed to Member States and/or the Union as appropriate.’

[2] Paras. 165-6.

[3] Para. 168. See also K. Lenaerts, ‘The Principle of Mutual Recognition in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice’, The Fourth Annual Sir Jeremy Lever Lecture, All Souls College Oxford, 30 Jan. 2015.

[4] Para. 169.

[5] Para. 170.

[6] Para. 174.

[7] Para. 176. See also Opinion 1/09, ECLI:EU:C:2011:123.

[8] Art. 1 says ‘Highest courts and tribunals of a High Contracting Party, as specified in accordance with Article 10, may request the Court to give advisory opinions on questions of principle relating to the interpretation or application of the rights and freedoms defined in the Convention or the protocols thereto.’

[9] Kadi and Al Barakaat International Foundation v Council and Commission, C‑402/05 P and C‑415/05 P, EU:C:2008:461.

[10] Para. 182-5.

[11] For hints of that view, see Discussion document of the Court of Justice of the European Union on certain aspects of the accession of the European Union to the European Convention for the protection of Human Rights and Fundamental freedoms, May 2010, paras. 4-5

[12] See further A. Kornezow, ‘The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice in the Light of the EU Accession to the ECHR—Is the Break-up Inevitable?’ (2012-13) 12 CYELS 227.

[13] Case C-562/13 ECLI:EU:C:2014:2453.

A lost opportunity for improving access to justice in environmental matters: the CJEU on the invocability of the Aarhus Convention

 

 

Dr. Apolline J. C. Roger, Senior Teaching Fellow in EU environmental law, University of Edinburgh Law School.

 

The right of access to justice provides environmental NGOs and citizens with a safeguard: the capacity to challenge the final decisions of public authorities when they have an impact on the environment and environmental health. By becoming Party to the Aarhus Convention on access to justice, public participation, and access to information in environmental matters in February 2005, the EU recognised that access to justice is an essential guarantee of good governance and a crucial component of the human right to a healthy environment.

 

However, the EU has always been reluctant when it comes to the direct challenge of its acts by citizens and NGOs. It is therefore not surprising that NGOs tried to challenge the adequacy of the EU’s system of legal remedies in light of the Convention’s provision on access to justice (Article 9(3)). In a judicial saga where the General Court was ultimately overruled, the Court of Justice avoided assessing whether the EU effectively ensures the right of access to justice in environmental matters by refusing to recognise the direct effect of Article 9(3) of the Aarhus Convention.

 

The complexity of the EU’s system of legal remedies: the genesis of the saga

 

The EU’s system of legal remedies gives Environmental NGOs (ENGOs) a specific procedure for reviewing each type of EU act in environmental matters. However, the procedures available are not of equal quality.

 

EU legislative acts and EU administrative acts of general scope which entail implementing measures can be challenged indirectly. It means that the CJEU can be asked to review their legality, but only by a national court in front of which this question was raised (according to the preliminary ruling procedure, Article 267 TFEU). However, an ENGO intending to use this procedure to challenge an EU act will be facing several obstacles. First, they must wait for a national measure to be taken (which can take a long time). Then, they may only access national courts if national law grants them standing rights (which is not a given). Finally, if these two obstacles are overcome, ENGOs must convince the national courts that a reference to the CJEU is necessary (which is far from automatic). For all of these reasons, the indirect challenge of EU acts does not offer the same certainty and efficiency as a direct judicial or administrative review procedure.

 

EU general administrative acts which do not entail implementing measures can be directly challenged by ENGOs before the CJEU. Finally, the last category of EU acts consists of EU individual administrative acts. They can be directly challenged before the CJEU, but only by their recipient (Article 263 TFEU).

 

Therefore, NGOs’ right of access to justice suffered from two severe limitations. First, they do not have any possibility to directly challenge EU administrative acts which entail implementing measures. Second, they cannot challenge EU individual acts unless they are the recipient of those acts (which is rarely the case). Are these limitations breaching Article 9(3) AC? Under Article 9(3), the Parties to the Aarhus Convention do not necessarily have to provide NGOs with a judicial procedure. However, when it is the case, Parties have to create a procedure of “internal review” (also called “administrative review”).

 

In an effort to implement the Aarhus Convention to the EU’s institutions and bodies, the EU did create an internal review procedure in environmental matters, in Article 10 of Regulation n°1367/2006 "Aarhus Regulation" or "AR". However, Article 2(1)(g) AR severely constrains the internal review procedure scope by defining an “administrative act” as “any measure of individual scope”.

 

In order to compensate for the deficiencies of the preliminary ruling procedure identified above, should the internal review set in Article 10 AR be extended to EU general administrative acts which entail implementing measures? Should Article 10 AR be extended even further to all EU general administrative acts, with or without implementing measures? Unsurprisingly, the European Courts were asked to answer these questions and therefore to evaluate the compliance of the EU’s system of legal remedies with Article 9(3) AC.

 

The General Court in T-396/09 and T-338/08: the EU’s system of legal remedies breaches the Aarhus Convention provision on access to justice

 

ENGOs quickly tried to obtain from the Commission a review of its decisions of general scope under Article 10 AR. The Commission rejected their requests, reminding that the Aarhus Regulation Article 2(1)(g) opens the procedure against individual acts only.  The unsuccessful ENGOs challenged these decisions in T-396/09 and T-338/08, claiming that Article 9(3) of the Aarhus Convention requires an extension of Article 10 AR to all EU administrative acts, including those of general scope. The General Court granted their request.

 

To support its position, the Court reminded that Article 9(3) has to be interpreted in light of the Convention’s objectives. The Convention aims at making access to justice a tool to ensure the quality of environmental decision-making process by empowering NGOs and citizens. It also promotes it as a fundamental pillar of the right to a healthy environment. Broad access to justice should therefore be ensured.

 

However, as the Court observed, most of the EU executive acts in environmental matters have a general scope. As a consequence, an internal review which is limited to individual acts has a minor effect on the improvement of access to justice. Finally, the General Court noted that Article 9(3) of the Convention does not leave the Parties free to choose which acts should be easily challengeable by NGOs and citizens. The only acts not covered by Article 9(3) AC are the acts adopted by institutions acting in a judicial or legislative capacity. The general acts adopted by the Commission within its executive powers are covered by the Convention, and thus should be easily challengeable, meaning that they cannot be excluded from the scope of Article 10 AR.

 

In 2008, the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee humbly reminded the EU that “the system of preliminary review does not amount to an appellate system with regard to decisions, acts, and omissions by the EU institutions and bodies” and does not “in itself meet the requirements of access to justice in Article 9 of the Convention”. The lack of a direct judicial procedure should be “fully compensated for by adequate administrative review procedures”. The General Court took heed of this reminder by complementing the preliminary ruling with a direct procedure: the internal review. However, by not distinguishing between general administrative acts which entail implementing measures and those that do not, the Court submitted the latter to two direct review procedures – one administrative, one judicial.

 

This indistinct broadening of Article 10 AR has advantages and disadvantages. On the plus side, it might have appeared as more respectful of the CJEU’s unshaken support of the preliminary ruling procedure as a sufficient way to access justice. Indeed, if the General Court had extended Article 10AR’s scope only to the EU administrative acts not directly challengeable, it would have explicitly recognised the shortcomings of the preliminary ruling procedure. On the other hand, the decision to broaden Article 10AR scope to all EU administrative acts created a higher risk to be overruled – a risk which materialised in January 2015.

 

The General Court overruled by the CJEU: a missed opportunity for access to justice at the EU and national levels

 

The CJEU overruled the General Court’s decisions in the joint cases C-404/12 P & C-405/12 P and C-401/12 P to C-403/12 P. The CJEU did not assess the adequacy of the EU system of legal remedies. It simply rejected the invocability of Article 9(3) of the Convention by considering that the conditions under which the indirect and the direct effect of an international provision can be recognised were not met. Therefore, the legality of Regulation 1367/2006 Article 10 could not be reviewed against Article 9(3) AC; the internal review remains available against individual acts only.

 

The joint cases C-404/12 P & C-405/12 P and C-401/12 P to C-403/12 P are, as the Jego-Quéré/UPA saga was (see C-50/00 UPA), a missed opportunity to improve access to justice at EU level. One could answer that courts should not go against the legislative will as expressed by the regulation’s wording – here Article 2(1)(g) AR. However, that would not have been the first time that the Court would have engaged in ambitious judicial interpretation. Furthermore, the legislator also expressed the will to commit to the Aarhus Convention and to guarantee the access to justice as a fundamental pillar of the human right to a healthy environment. The judicial path could have been a smooth way to reconcile the conflicting views carried by the Aarhus Convention and the restrictive scope of Article 10 AR.

 

Furthermore, the impact of this missed opportunity on access to justice goes beyond the EU level. Access to justice in environmental matters is indeed far from being equally and efficiently ensured in all Member States. Accepting to review the Aarhus regulation in light of Article 9(3) AC could have been an incentive for the national courts to review the standing rights granted by national law in light of the Convention.

 

Finally, the Court seems to have developed two different standards for access to justice at the EU and national levels. On one hand, the CJEU strongly pushes the national courts to broaden access to justice, as shown by its decision in Case C-240/09 (the ‘Slovakian bears’ case). On the other hand, the Court does not seem ready to follow the guidance it gave to national courts in C-240/09: “it is inconceivable that Article 9(3) of the Aarhus Convention be interpreted in such a way as to make it in practice impossible or excessively difficult to exercise rights conferred by EU law”. The preliminary ruling procedure makes it excessively difficult for ENGOs to exercise their right to access to justice. The internal review procedure offers an adequate alternative, which does not threaten the Courts with an overwhelming wave of cases. Finally, internal review procedures are truly adapted to environmental issues considering their preventive nature.

 

By refusing to broaden the scope of Regulation 1367/2006 Article 10, the CJEU rejected an easy fix for the inadequacy of the EU’s system of legal remedies.

 

Image: www.foe.scotland.org.uk

 

Barnard & Peers: chapter 22

Bringing the Panopticon Home: the UK joins the Schengen Information System

 

Steve Peers

Over two hundred years ago, British philosopher Jeremy Bentham devised the concept of the ‘Panopticon’: a prison designed so that a jailer could in principle watch any prisoner at any time. His theory was that the mere possibility of constant surveillance would induce good behaviour in prison inmates. In recent years, his idea for a panopticon has become a form of shorthand for describing developments of mass surveillance and social control.

The EU’s forays in this area began with the creation of the Schengen Information System (SIS) in the 1990s. The SIS is a well-known EU-wide database containing enormous amounts of information used by policing, immigration and criminal law authorities.  

Until now, the UK has not had any access to the SIS. But this week, the EU Council finally approved the UK’s participation in the System, thereby linking the EU’s most iconic database with the intellectual home of the panopticon theory. What are the specific consequences and broader context of this decision?

Background

The main purpose of the Schengen system is to abolish internal border checks between EU Member States, as well as some associated non-EU States.  At the moment, the full Schengen rules apply to all EU Member States except the UK, Ireland, Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. Those rules also apply to four associates: Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

All of the Member States are obliged ultimately to become part of the Schengen system, except for the UK and Ireland. Those two Member States negotiated an exemption in the form of a special Protocol at the time when the Schengen rules (which originated in the Schengen Convention, ie a treaty drawn up outside the EU legal order) were integrated into the EU legal system, as part of the Treaty of Amsterdam (in force 1999).

The UK and Ireland are not entirely excluded from the Schengen system. In fact, they negotiated the option to apply to join only some of the Schengen rules if they wished. Their application has to be approved by the Council, acting unanimously. The UK and Ireland essentially chose to opt in to the Schengen rules concerning policing and criminal law, including the SIS, but not the rules concerning the abolition of internal border controls and the harmonisation of rules on external borders and short-term visas.

The UK’s application to this end was approved in 2000 (see Decision here), and Ireland’s was approved in 2002 (see Decision here). But in order to apply each Decision in practice, a separate subsequent Council decision was necessary, because the Schengen system cannot be extended before extensive checks to see whether the new participant is capable of applying the rules in practice.  On that basis, most of the Schengen rules which apply to the UK have applied from the start of 2005 (see Decision, after later amendments, here). The exception is the rules on the SIS, which the UK was not then ready to apply. After spending considerable sums trying to link to the SIS, the UK gave up trying to do so, on the basis that the EU was anyway planning to replace the SIS with a second-generation system (SIS II). There’s a lot of further background detail in the House of Lords report on the UK’s intention to join the SIS (see here), on which I was a special advisor. (Note that Ireland does not apply any of the Schengen rules in practice yet).

It took ages for the EU to get SIS II up and running, and it finally accomplished this task by April 2013 (see Decision here). The UK had planned to join SIS II shortly after it became operational, but this was complicated by the process of opting out of EU criminal law and policing measures adopted before the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, and simultaneously opting back in to some of them again, on December 1^st 2014 (see discussion of that process here). This included an opt back in to the SIS rules.

Once that particular piece of political theatre concluded its final act, the EU and the UK returned to the business of sorting out the UK’s opt in to SIS II in practice. This week’s decision completed that process, giving the UK access to SIS II data starting from March 1^st. The UK can actually use that data, and enter its own data into the SIS, from April 13^th.

Consequences

What exactly does participation in the SIS entail? The details of the system are set out in the 2007 Decision which regulates the use of SIS II for policing and criminal law purposes. There are also separate Regulations governing the use of SIS II for immigration purposes and giving access to SIS II data for authorities which register vehicles. The former Regulation provides for the storage of ‘alerts’ on non-EU citizens who should in principle be denied a visa or banned from entry into the EU, while the latter Regulation aims to ensure that vehicles stolen from one Member State are not registered in another one. The UK participates in the latter Regulation, but not the former, since it could only have access to Schengen immigration alerts if it fully participated in the Schengen rules on the abolition of internal border controls. On current plans, this will happen when hell freezes over.

The SIS II Decision provides for sharing ‘alerts’ on five main categories of persons or things: persons wanted for arrest for surrender or extradition purposes (mainly linked to the European Arrest Warrant); missing persons; persons sought to assist with a judicial procedure; persons and objects who should be subject to discreet checks or specific checks (ie police surveillance); and objects for seizure or use as evidence in criminal proceedings. There are also rules on the exchange of supplementary information between law enforcement authorities after a ‘hit’. For instance, if the UK authorities find that a European Arrest Warrant has been issued for a specific person, they could ask for further details from the authority which issued it.

On the other hand, the SIS does not, as is sometimes thought, provide for a basis for sharing criminal records or various other categories of criminal law data, although the EU has set up some other databases or information exchange systems dealing with such other types of data. (On criminal records in particular, see my earlier blog post here). The main point of setting up the second-generation system was to extend the SIS to new Member States (although in the end a new system wasn’t actually necessary for that purpose), and to provide for new functionalities such as storing fingerprints, which will likely be put into effect in the near future.

In practice, the UK’s participation in SIS II is likely to result in the Crown Prosecution Service receiving more European Arrest Warrants (EAWs) to process, and in more efficient processing of EAWs which the UK has issued to other Member States. It will also be easier, for instance, to check on whether a car or passport stolen in the UK has ended up on the continent, or vice versa.

Broader context

As noted already, while the UK is only now joining the SIS, the System has been around for many years, and has proved to be the precursor of many EU measures in this field. Indeed, as EU surveillance measures go, the SIS turned out to be a ‘gateway drug’: the friendly puff that led inexorably to the crack den of the data retention Directive.

Of course, interferences with the right to privacy can be justified on the basis of the public interest in enforcement of criminal law and ensuring public safety – if the interference is proportionate and in accordance with the law. Compared to (for instance) the data retention Directive and the planned passenger name records system, the SIS is highly targeted, focussing only on those individuals involved in the criminal law process, or police surveillance, or banned from entry from the EU’s territory. The legitimacy of the system therefore depends upon the accuracy and legality of the personal data placed in to it, and the connected data protection rules. On this point, the EU and national data protection supervisors have reported that many data subjects do not even know about the data held on them in SIS II, and they have produced a guide to help them with accessing their data in the system.

There’s an inevitable tension between the EU’s goal to set the world’s highest data protection standards, on the one hand, while also developing multiple huge databases, information exchange systems and surveillance laws, on the other.  It’s as if the brains of the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham and the libertarian John Stuart Mill were both battling for control of the same body – forcing it to draw up plans for the Panopticon at the same time as it was storming the Bastille. If this tension manifested itself in fiction, it would probably take the form of a comedy about a vegetarian butcher, or a virgin porn star. But the need to ensure that measures to protect our security do not remove all our liberty is not a laughing matter.

 

*This blog post is linked to ongoing research on the upcoming 4^th edition of EU Justice and Home Affairs Law (forthcoming, OUP).

 

Image credit: nytimes.com

Barnard & Peers: chapter 25

Rights, remedies and state immunity: the Court of Appeal judgment in Benkharbouche and Janah

Steve Peers

Yesterday’s important judgment in Benkharbouche v Sudan and Janah v Libya by the Court of Appeal raised important issues of public international law, the ECHR and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and demonstrated the relationship between them in the current state of the British constitution. The case involved two domestic workers bringing employment law complaints against the respective embassies of Sudan and Libya, which responded to the complaints by claiming state immunity, based on a UK Act of Parliament (the State Immunity Act) which transposes a Council of Europe Convention on that issue.

The question is whether invoking state immunity for these employment claims amounted to a breach of human rights law, given that Article 6 of the ECHR (the right to a fair trial) guarantees access to the courts, according to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In turn, this raised issues of EU law, given that Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights likewise guarantees the right to a fair trial, and some of the claims concerned EU law issues (the race discrimination and working time Directives). (Other claims, such as for ordinary wages and unfair dismissal, were not linked to EU law). The two cases didn't concern human trafficking or modern slavery, although sometimes embassies are involved in such disputes too. But they would be relevant by analogy to such disputes, and there would also be a link to EU law in such cases, since there is an EU Directive banning human trafficking, which the UK has opted in to. 

The Court of Appeal, essentially following the prior judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal, made a careful study of recent ECtHR case law, concluding that state immunity could no longer be invoked against all employment law claims, but only against those claims concerning core embassy staff. This could not apply to domestic workers; Ms. Janah’s tasks did not involve (for instance) shooting any British policewomen.

But what was the remedy for this breach of human rights principles? At lower levels, the tribunals had been powerless to rule on the claims for breach of the ECHR, since the UK’s Human Rights Act awards the power to issue a ‘declaration of incompatibility’ that an Act of Parliament breaches the ECHR to higher courts only. So the Court of Appeal was the first court that could issue such a declaration, and it did so in this case. (The Court concluded that it could not ‘read down’ the relevant clauses in the State Immunity Act to interpret them consistently with the ECHR).

However, as compared to the effect of EU law, even a declaration of incompatibility with the ECHR is relatively weak, given that the potential remedy for a breach of EU law is the disapplication of national law, even Acts of Parliament if necessary, by the national courts. So the Court of Appeal also ruled that the relevant provisions of the State Immunity Act had to be disapplied, to the extent that they were applied as a barrier to the claims based on EU law. On this point, the Court was following the Employment Appeal Tribunal, which had also ruled to disapply the Act, given that any level of national court or tribunal has the power to disapply an act of parliament if necessary to give effect to EU law.

If I had a pound for every law student who has confused the remedies in UK law for the breach of EU law with the remedies for the breach of the ECHR, I would be very rich indeed. Fortunately, the facts of this case easily demonstrate the distinction between them. Only the higher courts could even contemplate issuing a declaration of incompatibility with the ECHR; and the remedy of disapplication of the Act of Parliament is obviously stronger than the declaration of incompatibility, allowing the case to proceed on the merits (as far as it relates to EU law) rather than having to wait for Parliament to change the law in order to do so. And equally, the case shows the importance of the requirement that a case has to be linked to EU law in order for the Charter to apply: only the race discrimination and working time claims benefit from the disapplication of provisions of the Act of Parliament, and so only those claims can proceed to court as things stand.

From an EU law perspective, the most interesting point examined by the Court of Appeal was the application of the ‘horizontal direct effect’ of Charter rights, ie the application of EU law against private parties (since non-EU States aren’t bound by EU law as States, the court assimilated them to private parties). In its judgment last year in AMS (discussed here), the CJEU distinguished between those Charter rights which could give rise to a challenge against national law based on the principle of supremacy of EU law, and those Charter rights which could not, since they were too imprecise to base a free-standing Charter claim upon. The right to non-discrimination on grounds of age fell within the former category, whereas the right of workers to be consulted and informed fell within the latter category. (Note that the CJEU case law classifies this as an application of the principle of supremacy, not horizontal direct effect, although the final outcome is the same no matter how the principle is classified, at least in cases like these).

The Court of Appeal reaches the conclusion that Article 47 of the Charter is also a provision which is precise enough to be used to challenge national legislation. That’s an important point, since Article 47 is a far-reaching and frequently invoked provision, and applies not just to state immunity issues but to many broader issues concerning access to the courts (including legal aid) and effective remedies.  For that reason, this judgment is an important precedent for national courts across the European Union faced with challenges to national laws based on Article 47 of the Charter, although of course it doesn’t formally bind any court besides the lower courts of England and Wales.

The Court didn’t need to rule on whether the substantive Charter rights raised by these cases would have the effect of disapplying national law, since it wasn’t ruling on the merits of the cases, but only on the issue of access to court. If it were ruling on the substantive issues, it would seem obvious that race discrimination claims have the same strong legal effect as age discrimination claims, as both claims are based on the same provision of the Charter (Article 21). However, claims based on breach of Article 31 of the Charter (the working time provision) might not have that strong legal effect. Indeed, an Advocate-General’s opinion in the pending case of Fennoll has concluded as much.

Furthermore, the social rights in the Charter (such as the rights set out in Article 31) are subject to a special rule in the Protocol to the EU Treaties which attempts to limit the effect of the Charter in the UK and Poland. The CJEU ruled in its NS judgment that this Protocol does not generally disapply the Charter in the UK, but it did not then rule if the Protocol might nonetheless affect the enforceability of social rights. Given that yesterday’s judgment was about Article 47 of the Charter, not about a substantive social right, it was not necessary for the Court of Appeal to grasp this nettle either.

Barnard & Peers: chapter 9, chapter 20

Ending the exploitation of seasonal workers: EU law picks the low-hanging fruit

 

Steve Peers

For a long time, it proved impossible for the EU to agree on legislation on migrant workers coming from non-EU countries. Eventually, the Member States were able to agree on some laws that mostly concerned higher-income migrants: the Blue Card Directive (on its implementation, see here) and the Directive on intra-corporate transferees (see discussion here). The EU has also adopted some general rules on the overall framework for admission of labour migrants (the so-called single permit Directive).

But for the first time last year, the EU also adopted rules on a less well-paid group of migrant workers: seasonal workers. This group of workers is potentially particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. Does the recent Directive go far enough to protect them from these risks?

Content of the Directive

Member States have to apply this Directive by 30 September 2016, and the UK, Ireland and Denmark opted out of it. It is limited in scope to those who normally reside outside the territory of the EU, and who apply to be admitted as seasonal workers, or who have already been admitted under the terms of the Directive. Also, it applies to those admitted for less than three months as well as those admitted for a longer period. For the former group, the Directive specifies that the EU’s borders and visas legislation continues to apply, and makes a number of cross-references to those measures. Furthermore, the Directive does not apply to those workers who are usually employed in other Member States, and who are ‘posted’ by their employers to work in a second Member State, to non-EU family members of EU citizens, and to non-EU citizens covered by an agreement which extends free movement rights (the EEA or EU/Swiss treaties).

A ‘seasonal worker’ is a worker who normally resides outside the EU, and who lives temporarily in the EU to ‘carry out an activity dependent on the passing of the seasons’, pursuant to a fixed-term contract concluded directly with an employer established in a Member State. The concept of a seasonal activity is in turn defined as an ‘activity that is tied to a certain time of the year by a recurring event or pattern of events linked to seasonal conditions during which required labour levels are significantly above those necessary for usually ongoing operations.’ Member States have to define what the relevant sectors are; the preamble refers to tourism, agriculture and horticulture as areas where seasonal work is usually needed.

Member States are free to set higher standards for certain issues (procedural safeguards, accommodation, workers’ rights and facilitation of complaints), but otherwise the Directive has set fully harmonised rules. So Member States can’t alter the substantive grounds for admission or the rules on duration of stay and re-entry.

The key criteria for admission are fully mandatory. Member States have to ensure that an application to enter as a seasonal worker is accompanied by: a valid work contract or binding job offer, setting out all of the details of the job; a valid travel document (possibly valid for the entire duration of the seasonal work); evidence of having, or having applied for, sickness insurance (unless such coverage comes with the work contract); and evidence of having accommodation, as defined in the Directive (see below). Member States have to check that the seasonal worker has sufficient resources not to have to use the social assistance system, cannot admit persons considered to pose a threat to public policy, public security or public health, and must check that the applicant does not pose a risk of illegal immigration and intends to leave the Member States’ territory when the authorization for seasonal work expires.

Applications have to be rejected whenever these conditions are not met, or where the documents presented with an application are ‘fraudulently acquired, or falsified, or tampered with.’ Member States also have to reject applications, ‘if appropriate’, where there has been a prior sanction against the employer for ‘undeclared work and/or illegal employment’, the employer is being wound up or has no economic activity, or the employer has been sanctioned for breach of the Directive.

Otherwise the grounds for refusal of an application are optional: a labour market preference test for home State citizens, other EU citizens or third-country nationals lawfully residing and forming part of the labour market; the application of Member States’ rules on volumes of admission of third-country nationals; or breaches of employment law by the employer, the use of seasonal work to replace a full-time job, or a prior breach of immigration law by the would-be worker. There are similar provisions on withdrawal of the authorisation to work as a seasonal worker, although it should be noted that Member States can withdraw authorization if the worker applies for international protection.

As for the admission procedure, Member States have to make information available on the conditions of entry and residence and rights, as well as the admission process. It’s up to Member States to decide whether the applicant or the employer makes the application, and the application process takes the form of a single application procedure for a combined work/residence status. Those applicants who fulfil the admission criteria and who do not fall foul of the grounds for refusal must be granted a permit or visa, in the format of the EU standard visa or residence permit.

There’s a total maximum limit of between five and nine months per calendar year of residence for a seasonal worker; they must then return to a third country. Since the Directive only regulates admission and stay of seasonal workers, it should follow that Member States still retain discretion to permit the worker to stay for longer on some other ground.

Within the maximum time limit, seasonal workers will be able, on one occasion, to change employers or to obtain an extension of their stay with their employer, if they still meet the criteria for admission, although the grounds for refusal will still apply. The preamble makes clear that this possibility is intended to avoid abuse, since the worker will not be tied to a single employer. Member States will have an option to allow further extensions or changes of employer. But again they can punish any worker who applies for international protection, by refusing to extend that worker’s stay.

Next, the Directive facilitates the re-entry of seasonal workers who were admitted at least once within the previous five years, if they complied with immigration law during their stay. This could include a simplified application process, an accelerated procedure, priority for previous seasonal workers, or the issue of several seasonal worker permits at the same time. The idea is to give an incentive to workers to comply with immigration law.

Member States have to impose sanctions against employers who have breached their obligations under the Directive, including a possible ban on employing seasonal workers. If seasonal workers’ permit to work is withdrawn because of the employer’s illegal behaviour, the employer must compensate the employees for all the work they have done or would have done. There are specific rules on the liability of sub-contractors.

Moving on to procedural safeguards, the Directive provides for: a notified decision in writing within ninety days of the application; special rules on the renewal of authorization; a chance to provide additional necessary information within a reasonable deadline; and a requirement that a rejection (or withdrawal or non-renewal of a permit) be issued in writing and open to a legal challenge, with information on the reasons for the decision, the redress available, and the relevant time-limits. Member States may charge fees for applications, if they are not disproportionate or excessive, and may require employers to pay the costs of workers’ travel and sickness insurance. Workers’ accommodation must ensure an ‘adequate’ standard of living, rents cannot be excessive, a contract for housing must be issued, and employers must ensure that accommodation meets health and safety standards.

As for the rights of seasonal workers, first of all they have the right to enter and stay on the territory of the relevant Member State, free access to the territory of that Member State, and the right to carry out the economic activity which they have been authorized to take up.  Furthermore, they have the right to equal treatment with nationals as regards terms of employment (including working conditions), freedom of association, back payments, social security, the transfer of pensions, access to goods and services available to the public (except housing), employment advice (on seasonal work), education, and recognition of diplomas, and tax benefits. However, equal treatment can be restricted as regards family benefits, unemployment benefits, education and tax benefits, and Member States are still free to withdraw or to refuse to renew the permit in accordance with the Directive. Finally, Member States must ensure monitoring, assessment, and inspections, and facilitate complaints workers or by third parties supporting or acting on their behalf.

Comments

According to its preamble, the intention of this Directive is to regulate the admission of seasonal workers with a view to enhancing the EU’s economic competitiveness, optimizing the link between migration and development, while guaranteeing decent working and living conditions for the workers, alongside incentives and safeguards to prevent overstaying or permanent stay. In principle it has achieved some of these goals, in particular by including a number of provisions to ensure equal treatment and decent accommodation for seasonal workers, to punish employers who mistreat workers or who breach immigration law, and to guarantee that the rules in question are enforced.

In fact the Directive was significantly improved on these points during the legislative process, in particular as regards monitoring and punishment of dodgy employers, accommodation standards, equal treatment (which was significantly extended in scope), employees’ costs, and remedies against employers (compare the final Directive to the original proposal). Doubtless this was largely due to the hard work of NGOs which raised these issues (see their joint statement here). Perhaps the EU should use this Directive as a template to try and address the exploitation of other vulnerable groups of migrant workers – for instance domestic workers, who are at particular risk of being enslaved or trafficked.

Having said that, there are some limits to what Member States were willing to agree. There are exceptions from the equal treatment rule, and some of the provisions on dodgy employers, as well as the ban on passing costs along to the workers, are optional, not mandatory. (See the comments on the final Directive by a group of NGOs here). The right to change employers is subject to conditions, and Member States might decided to allow only one such change. More broadly, while the provisions on enforcement are stronger than what Member States are usually willing to agree to in EU laws about migrant labour (or indeed EU employment law), it remains to be seen how much resources Member States are actually willing to expend on enforcement in practice.

Furthermore, since the Directive is limited in scope to those who are not yet on the territory, it can do nothing to alleviate the position of those who are present without authorization but who cannot be returned (ie who are in limbo) and it gives Member States express carte blanche to deprive asylum-seekers of even the modest income which they were previously earning as seasonal workers. Overall, while the Directive will hopefully have some effect achieving its objectives, it may be a classic example of what academics call ‘picking the low-hanging fruit’ – focusing on the easier issues and avoiding the harder ones.

*This post is based on my ongoing research for the 4^th edition of EU Justice and Home Affairs Law (forthcoming, OUP)

Photo credit: Globalpost.com

 

Barnard & Peers: chapter 26