Ochrana základních práv zaměstnanců v judikatuře Evropského soudního dvora

The objective of this article is to describe the development of the perception of human rights’ issues pertaining to the field of labour law under the new jurisdiction and legal order created by the European Communities. The progress in the human rights area shall be illustrated by changing approaches of the European Court of Justice and Member States and of course by the greater awareness of the citizens of the “ever closer Union” of their fundamental rights. The gist of the work tackles the most interesting labour law cases which the European Court of Justice was deciding and which are sometimes of trailblazer character. This article commences by a necessary introduction of human rights protection in the context of labour law. It further briefly tackles the development of the European Court of Justice’ case law regarding human rights’ aspects generally. It also describes various instruments of the other EC institutions tackling the controversial subject of human rights, up to the most recent document, The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the Europe’s Constitution. The principal part of this article concentrates on social human rights case law and outlines some of the basic general principles that the European Court of Justice employed when deciding such cases. However, it was never the aim of this paper to provide a complete list of Community fundamental social rights in the field of labour law as the author is well aware of the fact that such task would require much more elaborate analysis of this topic. Quite contrarily, the purpose of this article is to highlight labour law aspects connected with the judicial protection of fundamental rights of employees within the framework of the European Union and to enable a more clearer insight into some of the key judgments in this area. The final part reflects protection of fundamental social rights of employees provided by the Community in the Czech legal order. The article was written with the ultimate purpose of illustrating that fundamental social rights of employees are bound to enjoy more and more respect and the values comprised in some of the cases of the European Court of Justice and certain key Community instruments such as the Charter, are to become a necessary part of the foundations of the future European integration.