Resumen de In Charter We Trust? Constitutional Identity Review Revisited

Georgios Anagnostaras

• Almost a year since the First Senate of the German Federal Constitutional Court made the Charter the relevant standard of its judicial review in cases involving the application of legal provisions that are fully harmonised under EU law, the Second Senate of that same constitutional court was given the opportunity to apply that case law in the area of the European arrest warrant that used to be examined under its national identity review. The judgment turns identity review into an emergency backup guarantee that operates at a secondary level as regards the protection of fundamental rights and which comes into play in this area only in very exceptional circumstances. The constitutional court also adopts an integrative approach on the interpretation of fundamental rights that is based on the existence of an interaction between their coexisting standards of protection at national and supranational level. At the same time though, the constitutional court proves once again reluctant to make recourse to the preliminary reference procedure giving thus rise to the suspicion that it intends to shape autonomously its own understanding of the Charter requirements and to predetermine their future interpretation by the Court of Justice (ECJ).