The Charter of the EU enshrines assured social, economic and political rights for the EU people, into the EU law.
This was proclaimed officially in 2000, but its legal status was then unsure and it did not have complete legal consequence until the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon.
Under the EU Charter must take action and legislate always with the Charter and the EU's courts will legislation of the EU which contravenes it. This applies only to member country when they are implementing the EU act and doesn’t make longer competences of the EU.
The agreement setting up the European Economic Community (EEC) has not included any orientation to human rights and fundamental rights. It was printed a few years after the breakdown of the European Defense Community Treaty (EDCT) and the European Political Community Treaty (EPCT).
The EPCT had included rights provisions, the drafters of the EEC Treaty wished to avoid any implicitly political elements. Nevertheless the thought that the purely economic end of the fresh EEC Treaty would not be likely to include any effects for fundamental rights was almost immediately to be realized.
In 1999 the European Council proposed that a body would be set up to draft a fundamental rights charter. The body would consist of the members of national and European parliament, representatives of the head of state as well as the president of the commission. On being constituted in December of that year the "body" entitled itself the European Convention.
On 2nd October 2000, The Convention adopted the draft and the draft was seriously proclaimed by the European Commission, European Parliament, and the Council of Ministers on December 07, 2000. Nonetheless it was, decided to defer making a decision on the Charter's legal status. Nevertheless it did come with the political power of having been accepted by three influential institutions and as such was on a regular basis cited by the ECJ as a foundation of fundamental rights.
After the advent of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 the Fundamental Right's Charter has the similar legal importance as the EU Treaties.
