The Personal Scope of the European Social Charter: Questioning Equality

The European Social Charter, adopted by the Member States of the Council of Europe in 1961 and revised in 1996, is devoted to implement at European level the values and purposes underpinning the 1948 U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a complement of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, it also epitomizes the principle of the “indivisibility” of human rights. These aspirations, however, risk to be frustrated by the Charter personal scope’s limitations provided for in its Appendix. Through an in-depth critical analysis, the paper aims at disputing these restrictions as still justified, also in the light of the more flexible approach followed within the collective complaints procedure by the “Charter’s guardian”, the European Committee of Social Rights. Indeed, this quasi-judicial body has reasonably extended several Charter provisions to persons strictly excluded from its protection. In the enduring lack of new formal revisions, only widespread acceptance and effective implementation of Committee’s “jurisprudence” in Member States legal systems will be able to avoid the risk of an increasing marginalization of the Charter in the European multilevel constitutionalism.