REMEMBRANCE IN TIME - Index of

EUROPEAN EVOLUTION: FUNDAMENTAL
FREEDOMS AND FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS
1. Introduction
Christina BICK 1 , Lars HANEBERG 2
Against the background of the National Socialism and the Second World War it is not
surprising that the unification of Europe was not based on a corporate feeling or an
emotional commitment. Europe was unified in misery, destruction, expanses of rubble,
prison camps and millions of dead persons. Emotional pleas for a corporate feeling
including Germany would have been unimaginable. [1]
Nevertheless there had been a passionate motion for Europe after the World War II. It
was based on the idea of an economic cooperation but was characterized by a politic
nature. Within the so called Schumann-Plan the peacekeeping in Western Europe, the
unification of Europe by means of an economic fundament on which a political
unification could be based and the overcoming of the years of oppositions among
Germany and France were referred to as substantive concerns. Pivotal point of the plan
was the consolidation of strategic goods for the reconstruction and the wartime economy.
This was a learned lesson of the Treaty of Versailles, which tried to establish a stable
peace framework by means of reparations and assignments of guilt and failed. The
Schuman Plan was a method of small steps.
The European integration can be divided into three phases: the start-up phase from 1950
to the mid of the 1970s, the phase of consolidation and stagnation from the mid of the
1970s until the mid of the 1980s and the phase of a closer political supranationality. [2]
This closer cooperation and Europeanization can also be seen in the change of the
values of the EU – especially the growing importance of fundamental rights.
2. Definition of fundamental freedoms and fundamental rights
In the European Union (EU) fundamental freedoms and fundamental rights have to be
distinguished.
Fundamental freedoms constitute the right to trade, live, work and invest money freely
within the EU; which in principle are all economic rights.
The first and most important EU objective was the establishment of a common market – an
economic unit intended to eliminate or markedly reduce trade barriers among its members.
Due to the constitutive significance for the trade flows within a common market the free
movement of goods (art. 28-37 TFEU), persons (art. 45-55 TFEU), services (art. 56-62 TFEU)
and capital (art. 63-66 TFEU) are referred to as fundamental freedoms [3]. [4]
In contrast fundamental rights are rights derived from natural law and therefore deemed
1
Chairs of European and International Economic Law and Public Economic Law, Carl von Ossietzky
University of Oldenburg, Germany.
2
Chair of Accounting and Corporate Governance, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany.