Torres Pérez, Aida2023-05-252023-05-252020Torres Pérez A. Rights and powers in the European union: towards a charter that is fully applicable to the member states?. Camb Yearb Eur Leg Stud. 2020;22:279-300. DOI: 10.1017/cel.2020.81528-8870http://hdl.handle.net/10230/56970This contribution will tackle a central question for the architecture of fundamental rights protection in the EU: can we envision a Charter that fully applies to the Member States, even beyond the limits of its scope of application? To improve our understanding of the boundaries of the Charter and the potential for further expansion, I will examine the legal avenues through which the CJEU has extended the scope of application of EU fundamental rights in fields of state powers. While the latent pull of citizenship towards a more expansive application of the Charter has not been fully realized, the principle of effective judicial protection (Article 19(1) TEU) has recently shown potential for protection under EU law beyond the boundaries of the Charter. As will be argued, effective judicial protection may well become a doorway for full application of the Charter to the Member States. While such an outcome might currently seem politically unsound, I contend that a progressive case-by-case expansion of the applicability of the Charter to the Member States would be welcome from the standpoint of a robust notion of the rule of law in the EU.application/pdfeng© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Centre for European Legal Studies, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cel.2020.8Charterfundamental rightsscope of applicationfree movementcitizenshipeffective judicial protectioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess