Does the centrality of human values in the lisbon treaty promise more than it can actually offer? Biometrics law and policy as a case study

Abstract

The adoption of the Treaty of Lisbon and the granting to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the same legal force as the Treaty lent a new impulse to the consideration of fundamental human values by the European Union (EU). The question remains, however, of how this legal discourse centred on human values is actually shaping the EU regulatory framework in specific policy domains. The aim of this paper is to critically appraise the ways that certain values rendered explicit through the Charter’s rights and principles are being construed in the context of EU policy and law on biometrics, an ethically and morally sensitive security technology whose development and use are being actively promoted by the EU. We conclude that the interpretation of the pertinent Charter’s rights and principles as well as their balancing owes to a great deal to the goals of EU policies, shaped largely by political and economic considerations. In respect of biometrics, research priorities, combined with those of EU security policy, then tend to prevail over ethically or morally based legal claims.