Abstract
At the time of approval of the Lisbon Treaty, the legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU raised both fears and hopes, mainly due to the inclusion of number of social rights to its content. Almost a decade later it is already possible, drawing on the post-Lisbon case law of the EU Court of Justice to assess whether the Charter has become a tool for building a more social EU or not.
The result of this analysis leads rather to scepticism about the importance of the Charter for social reorientation of the EU.Due to the not entirely clear scope of applicability of the Charter, due to a limited horizontal direct effect of its provisions and in particular due to the limited powers of the EU in social issues, the Charter has not produced any major difference from the period when it was a non-binding declaration and the Court used some of its provisions as expressions of general principles of EU law.