Sandwiched Between Strasbourg and Karlsruhe: EU Fundamental Rights Protection

Starting out from the notion of the `Verfassungsgerichtsverbund´, coined by the President Vosskuhle of the German Federal Constitutional Court, this contribution sketches the manner in which the European Court of Justice operates, sandwiched in between the European Court of Human Rights that sets a minimum standard of rights protection, and the national constitutional courts that demand higher levels of protection beyond that minimum threshold. This seems to place the high claims of the ECJ to its "autonomy" in perspective of constitutional realities. The argument is illustrated by the Bundesverfassungsgericht’s judgment of 15 December 2015 on the European Arrest Warrant and the right to trial in cases of prior conviction `in absentia´ and the German constitutional identity as based on the constitutional right to respect of human dignity, and the European Court of Justice judgment of 5 April 2016, C-404/15 PPU Aranyosi.