The Charter had not been adopted unanimously, as opposition came from Great Britain and its then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Great Britain did, however, eventually sign the Charter in 1998 after the election of Tony Blair as Prime Minister. The nature of the Community Charter is non-binding and it is a political declaration. As such it has no legal effect and cannot be enforced legally. Although it still remains a political document with a programmatic nature, “it has given flesh and bones to Community social policies.”[2] It establishes the principles on which the European labour law model is based. The Charter specifically deals with freedom of movement; employment and remuneration; improvement of living and working conditions; social protection; freedom of association and collective bargaining; vocational training; equal treatment for men and women; information, consultation and participation of workers; health protection and safety at the workplace; protection of children and adolescents; elderly persons; and disabled persons. The supervision of the Charter consists of a reporting procedure in which an annual report on the implementation of the Charter is published by the Commission.

As has already been pointed out, the Community Charter is a non-binding declaration of intent by the Heads of State or Government of the Member States. Yet, its adoption marks a significant moment in the development of the social dimension in the EU. The former President of the Commission, Jacques Delors, who had made a commitment to addressing the social aspects of the single market, described the importance of the Community Charter in that it is a means of discovering the extent of agreement on common values by the Member States and how those commonly recognised values can be incorporated into the language of rights.[3] Moreover, its importance “is that it clearly spells out the whole range of the Community’s social policy objectives for the 1990s, and enunciates these in terms of a series of fundamental principles in a single EC-level text.”[4] All consequent instruments regarding social policy, such as the Maastricht Agreement on Social Policy, make reference to the Community Charter. The Treaty of Amsterdam explicitly bears reference to the Community Charter and “it is no longer unthinkable that the Court of Justice might have the power to interpret and enforce the Charter.”[5]

The Charter lists 19 economic and social rights and employs a formula of obligations on State Parties to move towards their progressive realization. It is divided into 5 parts and also consists of a preamble and an appendix. The preamble of the Charter, as that of the ECHR, declares the objective of the Council of Europe of achieving greater unity between the member states through “the maintenance and further realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” It further states the State Parties “are resolved to make every effort to improve the standard of living and to promote the social well-being of their populations by means of appropriate institutions and actions.”

In Part I of the Charter is to be found the list of 19 principles accepted as policy goals by the State Parties. Part II elaborates provisions, in the following order, on the right to work; the right to just conditions of work; the right to safe and healthy working conditions; the right to fair remuneration; the right to organize; the right to bargain collectively; the right of children and young persons to protection; the right of employed women to protection; the right to vocational guidance and training; the right to protection of health; the right to social security; the right to social and medical assistance; the right to benefit from social welfare services; the right of physically or mentally disabled persons to vocational training, rehabilitation and social resettlement; the right of the family to social, legal and economic protection; the right to engage in a gainful occupation in the territory of other Parties; and the right of migrant workers and their families to protection and assistance.[2]

The undertakings of State Parties are elaborated in Part III of the Charter. The State Parties do not have to accept Part II of the Charter in its entirety upon ratification. However, they must accept ten or more articles, which must include the acceptance of five of the seven key articles, or 45 paragraphs of the Charter.

The supervision procedure of the implementation of the undertakings listed in the Charter is explained in Part IV. The Protocol of 1991 has modified some of the provisions of the Charter and has contributed to a notable improvement in the supervisory mechanism. The monitoring system consists of a reporting procedure, whereby the State Parties are under obligation to submit reports on a yearly basis on how they have implemented the provisions of the Charter both legally and in practice. The reports are examined by the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) which consists of thirteen independent and impartial members elected for a period of six years by the Committee of Ministers. The ECSR decides whether a State Party has implemented the provisions in law and practice and publishes its conclusions every year.

In case a State Party does not act upon the decision of the ECSR and amend the situation in order to comply with the Charter, a recommendation is given to the State by the Committee of Ministers. The work of the Committee of Ministers is prepared by governmental representatives of the State Parties, or Governmental Committee. It in turn receives assistance from observers from the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations of Europe (UNICE) and the International Organization of Employers (IOE).

Part V of the Charter is dedicated to the final provisions on derogations, territorial application and restrictions. In the Appendix are included clarifications of some provisions of the Charter which were requested by governments in order to clearly define what their obligations entail. Some provisions in the Appendix clearly show the difference between the ECHR and the Charter. “Unlike the European Convention, the rights of the Charter do not apply to every person within the territory of the Contracting Parties.”[3] The scope of the Charter applies only to foreigners who are nationals of other State Parties.

The treaty bodies, or conventional mechanisms, have been established to monitor the implementation of the provisions of the six main human rights treaties. The six conventional mechanisms are the Human Rights Committee (HRC), the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Committee Against Torture (CAT), and the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC). All the Committees consider periodic reports by State parties and four Committees are authorized to consider complaints from individuals. “In the case of many States these procedures provide the only avenues of international redress for individuals.”[1]

The HRC has been set up to monitor the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, when the Covenant entered into force in 1976. It is composed of 18 independent experts and under the First Optional Protocol, which entered into force together with the Covenant, it is able to consider individual complaints with reference to violations of their civil and political rights. The State parties are under obligation to submit to the HRC periodic reports, which “should indicate measures adopted to give effect to rights in the Covenant and on the progress made in the enjoyment of those rights.”[2]

The CESCR deals with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and was established by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 1985. It consists of 18 independent members which are elected by and report to the ECOSOC, unlike the other Committees. “The obvious benefit of being a subsidiary organ of ECOSOC is that the Committee maintains a significant degree of autonomy from the State parties.”[3] However, the Committee was primarily intended to assist ECOSOC in the consideration of reports and as such is itself subject to the changes within ECOSOC.[4]

The CERD monitors the implementation of the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and is also composed of 18 independent experts. Under article 14 of the Convention, the Committee has the capacity to consider communications from individuals. The CEDAW consists of 23 independent experts and monitors the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. It also accepts communications from individuals under the Optional Protocol to the Convention. The CAT has been established to monitor the observance of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. There are 10 members in the Committee. Under article 22 it considers communications from individuals. The CRC monitors the implementation of the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and is also composed of 10 members. It, like the CESCR, is not authorized to consider complaints from individuals, but its activities include thematic examinations on specific issues and regional and subregional missions by its members.[5]

The Special Procedures of the CHR, or extra-conventional mechanisms, in which individual experts operate as Special Rapporteur, Independent Expert, Representative or members of a Working Group, provide for a more flexible response to human rights violations than the Committees, due to the ad-hoc nature of this system.[6] Under this system, the individual experts examine and report to the Commission either the human rights situation in a specific country or territory or on a specific theme that is seen as a threat to human rights globally. Thus, they are divided into country mechanisms and thematic mechanisms. Nearly 50 of these country and thematic mechanisms have been established and function as an important system, although not initially intended as one, for human rights protection worldwide. This importance may be depicted by the fact that the reports of the independent experts sometimes “bring to the attention of the international community issues that are not adequately on the international agenda.”[7]

So far there have been 20 country mechanisms set up which monitor the human rights situations in specific countries, as well as a Special Committee which investigates the Occupied Territories. Some of the thematic mechanisms that have so far been established deal with issues such as arbitrary detention, the right to development, disappearances, religious intolerance, etc.