Quote Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat View Post
However, there is one caveat: Lisbon enabled the EU to subscribe to arbitration by the ECHR. The EU is since a month a legal entity of its own (although many people presumed, most notably those against the EU, that it had been so for ages). Together with all the member states, the EU is now directly bound by the ECHR.
This is one of the great aspects of Lisbon: the EU is now bound directly by legal precedent of the European Court for Human Rights.
Some MEP's asked questions to the commission about that. I don't know if they're answered yet, but the answer seems pretty clear to me.
The Lisbon Treaty says that the EU will accede to the ECHR. That means that acts and decisions of the Union can be brought before the ECHR court. It does not mean that the EU will in enforce ECHR decisions directed against countries wich happen to be member states of the EU. The Lisbon treaty itself explicitly says that the EU's accession to the ECHR will not give the EU more authority than it has according to the Lisbon treaty itself.