This master's thesis examines the accession of the European Union to the European Convention on Human Rights following Opinion 2/13 of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The central research question is whether the CJEU's interpretation of the principle of autonomy of EU law imposed constraints that go beyond what is necessary to safeguard the specific characteristics of the EU legal order. The analysis addresses the key objections raised in Opinion 2/13, subsequent developments in the case law of the CJEU and the ECtHR, constitutional pluralism and the fragmentation of international law, as well as the revised 2023 draft accession agreement. The thesis finds that safeguarding the autonomy of EU law is legitimate and necessary to preserve the unity of the EU legal order, but does not justify the automatic exclusion of effective external human rights supervision. Developments in the case law and the continuation of accession negotiations demonstrate that institutional solutions can be devised which preserve the EU's structure of competences while enabling its integration into the ECHR system. The thesis concludes that the central hypothesis is substantially confirmed, while the future of accession will depend primarily on the interpretation of the autonomy of EU law in the pending Opinion 1/25 proceedings.
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