Ten Years On: The Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union Since Opinion 2/13

Ten years ago, when the Court of Justice delivered Opinion 2/13, the author of the present Article, together with Ramses A Wessel, argued that one of the consequences of the deferral of accession to the ECHR was that the Court of Justice gained extra time to develop case law based on the Charter of Fundamental Rights without being fully exposed to the direct influence of the European Court of Human Rights. This Article provides a tour d’horizon of the existing jurisprudence, showing the key patterns and tendencies, which can be characterised as development by continuity, with the biggest milestones being the application of the Charter in rule of law cases, the gradual determination of the essence of rights, and the application of the key tenets of primacy and direct effect to the Charter.