EU Charter of Fundamental Rights: What It Is and What It Protects

One text, born from a 1999 mandate

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union brings together civil, political, economic and social rights that used to be scattered across different treaties. It covers EU citizens, but also anyone else living in the Union’s territory: no member-state passport is required to be protected by its text.

The process starts in June 1999, when the European Council meeting in Cologne hands a Convention the task of drafting it. The work takes a year and a half: the draft text is approved on 2 October 2000, the European Council in Biarritz backs it on 13-14 October, the European Parliament approves it on 14 November, and the Commission does the same on 6 December. On 7 December 2000 the three institutions sign and solemnly proclaim the Charter in Nice — the source of the name many still use for it, the Nice Charter.

These are the same three institutions that run the European Union day to day: how power is divided between them is explained in how the European Union works.

Seven titles, 54 articles

The Charter runs to 54 articles, grouped into seven titles: Dignity, Freedoms, Equality, Solidarity, Citizens’ Rights, Justice, and a seventh title of general provisions (Articles 51-54) that governs how it applies. The first title, Dignity, opens with Article 1 on human dignity and Article 2 on the right to life; the second, Freedoms, runs through to Article 8 on the protection of personal data; the fourth, Solidarity, includes Article 35 on health protection and Article 37 on environmental protection.

The Charter draws on the European Convention on Human Rights, on the constitutional traditions of the member states (in Italy, it’s the opening articles of the Italian Constitution that set out the founding principles), on the European Social Charter and on other international conventions.

Real-world example: Article 8 of the Charter protects personal data. The European Convention on Human Rights, written in 1950, has no equivalent article — a right missing from the older text, useful for understanding what the Charter adds when the subject turns to mass surveillance and human rights.

Binding only since 2009

Proclaiming a text isn’t enough to make it law. For nine years, from 2000 to 2009, the Charter remains without binding force of its own. It’s re-proclaimed in Strasbourg in 2007, in an adapted version; the change comes with the Treaty of Lisbon, which enters into force on 1 December 2009: Article 6(1) of the Treaty on European Union has since given the Charter the same legal value as the Treaties. The Charter doesn’t become a treaty in its own right — it stays a text another treaty points to, a concrete example of what separates a binding legal norm from a political declaration.

Nice Charter, ECHR and Universal Declaration: three different documents

The phrase “European charter of rights” and the acronym ECHR come up together often, but they point to different documents, from two different organizations, from different eras.

According to the official page of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, the ECHR was the first binding instrument to give legal effect to some of the rights listed in the 1948 Universal Declaration, told in full in the Recap on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: it bridges the UN’s statement of principle and the binding treaties that followed, the Nice Charter included.

The European Union, as an institution, has not joined the ECHR yet. Accession has been underway since 2023: the final draft agreement got preliminary approval in March 2023, and in November 2025 the European Commission asked the Court of Justice of the EU for an opinion, the last step before ratification can begin.

The Charter and the ECHR remain two parallel instruments, not one nested inside the other. The courts that apply them, the Court of Justice of the EU and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, are also two separate bodies.