Article 52: Twenty-Eight Shades of Interpretation?

Article 52 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (‘the Charter’) seems, prima facie, to have received rather divergent interpretations at the level of EU Member States. However, a closer look reveals that these divergences can mostly be understood as different shades of rather similar, or at least comparable, interpretations. As revealed by the analysis in this chapter, many discrepancies between Member States’ interpretations stem from divergent terminological use of legal notions from the Charter, rather than conceptual differences in the understanding of these notions. This is true, for example, of the meaning and scope of the proportionality analysis and the notion of the essence of fundamental rights. In a similar vein, the national reports show differences in the ways in which Member States interpret and apply Charter rights, but this does not mean that the content of the rights themselves is necessarily...