Eric Stein Working Paper No 2/2010
Michal Bobek and David Kosař
The Application of European Union Law and the Law of the European Convention of Human Rights in the Czech Republic and Slovakia - an Overview
Cite as:
Michal Bobek and David Kosař, "The Application of European Union Law and the Law of the European Convention of Human Rights in the Czech Republic and Slovakia - an Overview," Eric Stein Working Paper No. 2/2010, available at http://www.ericsteinpapers.eu/papers/2010/1.html
Abstract
This paper discusses the application of the European Union Law and the European Convention on Human Rights in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Instead of a country-by-country analysis, we opted for an integrated approach, dividing the paper by subject matter. This illustrates the divergent applications in the Czech Republic and Slovakia despite their common legal background.
The paper is divided to two main Parts. Part A focuses on European Union Law. Part B deals with the application of the European Convention on Human Rights. Both Part A and Part B consist of four sections. Part A. 1 describes the constitutional bases for domestic application of the EU Law. Part A. 2 discusses the constitutional cases dealing with EU Law. Part A. 3 explains the stance of both constitutional courts on various aspects of preliminary rulings. Part A. 4 examines the application of EU Law by ordinary courts and the jurisprudence of both constitutional courts reviewing of national law for compatibility with the EU law. Part B also starts with the constitutional bases for domestic application of the ECHR (Part B. 1) followed by an analysis of the effects of ECtHR’s jurisprudence in both national systems (Part B. 2). Part B. 3 focuses on the application of the ECHR before both constitutional courts. Part B. 4 draws general conclusions on the application of the Strasbourg jurisprudence before ordinary courts. Finally, Part C contains concluding remarks.
Keywords
European Union Law - European Convention for Protection of Human Rights - domestic application – Czech Republic – Slovak Republic - constitution - hierarchy - judicial review - preliminary rulings
You can download the paper here [pdf].