ABSTRACT
The sphere of EU activity described as the creation of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ), first formalised by the Treaty of Amsterdam, is defined to encompass three policy areas: free movement of persons accompanied by appropriate external border controls and common rules on asylum and immigration; prevention of crime; and judicial cooperation in criminal and civil matters.1 The Treaty on the Functioning of the EU in the first provision of the title dedicated to this field proclaims that the Union shall constitute an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, but adds that this is to be accomplished ‘with respect for fundamental rights and the different legal systems and traditions of the Member States’.2 So it is the Treaty itself that imposes on EU measures in the AFSJ the requirement of complying with ‘fundamental rights’. This entails that Member States’ action in the AFSJ should observe national and international laws protecting human rights. Moreover, because such action of the Member States falls within ‘the scope of Union law’, they have to comply also, as an independent matter of EU law, with ‘fundamental rights’, guaranteed and protected by that law.3
