Volume 4 issue 1 November 2016

The Status of Human Rights Protection in Europe: It’s Complicated

Jen Neller, in conversation with Dr Sonia Morano-Foadi
The UK has voted to leave the European Union and Prime Minister Theresa May has expressed her aversion to the European Convention on Human Rights, but confusion abounds as to what the current architecture of Europe is, let alone what it might look like in the future. This article seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of the development of supranational human rights protections in Europe and the status of the current quest for greater integration. In particular, the stalled movement towards the accession of the EU to the ECHR is examined and likened to a riddle: to avoid subjecting Member States to conflicting obligations, the ECHR must be granted ultimate authority in the field of human rights, but without compromising the autonomy of EU law. The article concludes with a conversation with Dr Sonia Morano-Foadi, whose extensive research into the European human rights institutions enables her to shed some light on the likelihood of the accession riddle ever being solved and to provide a prognosis for European rights protections in the future.