De-politisation of Human Rights: the European Union and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Abstract

The definition of competences between the European Union (EU) and its Member States has always been a topic question. Both the EU and its Member States are Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and this seems to increase rather than diminishing the uncertainty on the relevant competences. Human rights have an intrigued paradigm in the EU: despite the presence of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the EU Treaties do not confer the human rights competence on the EU. This paradigm needs the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be solved. While, on the one hand, the CRPD seems to need the definition of clear hard competences; on the other hand, it seems to ignite the new EU soft governance architecture. This paper focuses on two main aspects: legal and political. These two aspects are investigated with the effort to depict possible developments of the EU governance, where human rights are promoted also through their de-politicisation.