With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty (12/2009), the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CDFUE) has gone from being a political instrument to being binding. As the Court of Justice of the EU (TJ) has expressly recognized, after this change in its legal nature, a phase of consolidation of the Charter has begun; that is, a process of definition by the TJ of the doctrine or parameters of legality that govern human rights in the EU. This process will have profound legal repercussions. The CDFUE is redefining: a) The role of the TJ, which is behaving like a Constitutional Court; b) the parameters of legality of community acts; c) the relationship between the EU rights protection system with the systems of the Member States.

The formulation of this doctrine by the TJ will take place at two different levels. On the one hand, in the decisions of the TJ resulting from direct appeals (through which the TJ will control the legality of the acts of the institutions and of the Member States when they apply community law to the Charter). On the other hand, through pre-judicial questions that are raised by the internal Courts. In this sense, a source of controversies are the cases in which the internal Courts must decide between applying the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution or, rather, the rights derived from the Charter. In four sentences approved between 2013 and 2014, the TJ has responded superficially to this question by saying that when the national judge acts as a community judge (this is within the scope of competence of the EU) he should only attend to the community system of fundamental rights. However, this jurisprudence is too general and insufficient to answer questions that currently affect the application of community law by domestic courts. Suffice it to say that it is not clear that the EU system should always prevail, in particular if the standards of protection are lower than those of internal systems.

Furthermore, the problems of the application of community rights will foreseeably increase, for example, with the incorporation of the Area of ​​Freedom, Security and Justice into the sphere of competence of the EU, since it has a great impact on the fundamental rights of citizens. Therefore, the TJ must clearly identify the cases in which the community protection system or the national system must be applied. Not only that, the TJ must also standardize protection standards.

The consolidation of a clear and motivated doctrine that responds to these situations is important to give the decisions of the TJ sufficient legitimacy and prevent them, in a context of growing euroscepticism, from being challenged by domestic courts.

The objective of the project is to contribute to the consolidation of the TJ doctrine on the Charter, through academic debate and legal analysis of the problems that its application is generating in the different Member States, with special attention to the practice of the courts. Spanish people. In this way, it seeks to facilitate the so-called judicial dialogue between the national courts and the TJ and the legal harmonization and integration of the different European legal systems involved.