EU as a human rights actor?

Abstract

The human rights are fundamental principle of the European Union law, which should be observed in adoption of legislative rules as well as in implementation practice. The EU had been initially founded as the economic cooperation project and an ambition to establish cooperation between its member states also in political agenda became more visible especially since the Lisbon Treaty, by which the position of EU in area of external relations was strengthened. The paper analyses position of the European Union when promoting and protecting human rights in external relations. As there exist several tools and mechanisms EU may use in implementation of human rights policy, we analyze the role of the EU in relation to the application of human rights in foreign policy as stated in Article 2 and Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union.

Keywords

• human rights
• European Union
• external relations
• Copenhagen criteria