Charter

noun · Grundrechtecharta

In Union law the Charter is the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Grundrechtecharta, which since Lisbon has the same legal value as the Treaties, Art. 6 Abs. 1 EUV. It binds the Member States only when they are implementing Union law, Art. 51 Abs. 1 GRCh, not across all national law, and it is not the ECHR or the European Social Charter.

Which translation, when

gleicher Rang wie die Verträgethe status: the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Grundrechtecharta, has since the Treaty of Lisbon the same legal value as the Treaties, Art. 6 Abs. 1 EUV, so it is primary Union law, not a mere declaration.

bindet Staaten nur bei Durchführung des Unionsrechtsthe reach: the Charter binds the Member States, in the words of Art. 51 Abs. 1 GRCh, only when they are implementing Union law; it is not a general national bill of rights like the Grundgesetz, and the Court of Justice in Åkerberg Fransson aligned its scope with that of Union law, so reading it as governing all national action overstates when a Charter right can be invoked.

nicht EMRK, nicht Sozialchartathe pairing to keep: the Union Grundrechtecharta is not the European Convention on Human Rights, the EMRK of the Council of Europe, which is a Konvention and not a Charta, nor the European Social Charter, the Europäische Sozialcharta; a bare Charta is ambiguous, so the instrument must be named.

Why

In a Union-law text the Charter is the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the Grundrechtecharta, and two points decide how far it reaches. First, status: since the Treaty of Lisbon the Charter has the same legal value as the Treaties, Art. 6 Abs. 1 EUV, so it is primary Union law. Second, scope, which is the trap. By Art. 51 Abs. 1 GRCh the Charter is addressed to the institutions of the Union and to the Member States only when they are implementing Union law; it does not, Art. 51 Abs. 2 GRCh, extend the field of Union law or create new competences. So the Charter is not a general national bill of rights standing alongside the Grundgesetz for all purposes; whether a Charter right can be invoked against a national measure turns on whether that measure falls within the scope of Union law, which the Court of Justice in Åkerberg Fransson aligned with the Charter’s own field of application. It must also be kept apart from neighbouring instruments: the European Convention on Human Rights, the EMRK, belongs to the Council of Europe and is a Konvention, and the European Social Charter, the Europäische Sozialcharta, is a different treaty again. A bare Charta names none of them clearly. So the rendering Grundrechtecharta is right, but only with its limited reach and its distinctness from the ECHR understood.

Typical mistakes

The Charter binds the Member States only when they implement Union law, Art. 51 Abs. 1 GRCh, so reading it as a bill of rights for all national action overstates when it applies.
It is not the European Convention on Human Rights: the EMRK is a separate Council-of-Europe instrument, so conflating Charter and Convention is wrong.
It is not the European Social Charter either, so a bare Charta should be resolved to the Grundrechtecharta when the Union Charter is meant.

What matters

Rendering a Union fundamental-rights point, the translation should use Grundrechtecharta for the Charter of Fundamental Rights, note its rank alongside the Treaties, Art. 6 Abs. 1 EUV, and mark that it binds the Member States only when they implement Union law, Art. 51 Abs. 1 GRCh. It should be kept distinct from the EMRK and the Europäische Sozialcharta.

Authority

Art. 6 EUV
Art. 51 GRCh

What the machine misses

Machine output may render Charter as a bare Charta or treat it as a general national bill of rights. It loses that the Grundrechtecharta has the rank of the Treaties, Art. 6 Abs. 1 EUV, that under Art. 51 Abs. 1 GRCh it binds the Member States only when they implement Union law, and that it is neither the EMRK nor the Europäische Sozialcharta. The rendering overstates its reach and blurs it with other instruments.

See what the machine does with this clause →

Examples

the Charter of Fundamental Rights	die Grundrechtecharta
within the scope of Union law	im Anwendungsbereich des Unionsrechts
a breach of the Charter	ein Verstoß gegen die Grundrechtecharta
the Charter and the ECHR	die Grundrechtecharta und die EMRK