Twenty years ago, in December 2000, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union was proclaimed and 9 years later, with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, it became binding.

On the occasion of the anniversary of its proclamation, a conference was co-organised by the Centre for European Law to reflect on the effectiveness of this instrument and to answer the following questions: What is the real impact of the Charter of Fundamental Rights on the citizen? What are the weaknesses of this instrument in practice? How can interest in this instrument be strengthened among civil society and actors, particularly in the judicial world?

The Conference led to the publication of a special issue of the Cahiers de droit européen.

In this issue, coordinated by Emmanuelle Bribosia, Cécilia Rizcallah and Sébastien Van Drooghenbroeck, you will find, among others, contributions from the President of the Court of Justice Koen Lenaerts, the judge of the European Court of Human Rights Paul Lemmens as well as several professors and researchers from the ULB-IEE (Emmanuelle Bribosia, Cécilia Rizcallah, Ramona Coman, Justine Delacroix, Ilaria Gambardella).

The special issue of the Cahiers de droit européen is available here.

The recording of the Conference on the anniversary of the Charter is available here.