The system of human rights protection in Europe has its genesis in the Second World War and is closely linked to the international efforts which resulted in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) with the creation of the Council of Europe as a dedicated regional organization of European nations comprised of members committed to the preservation of freedom and democracy. The genesis was partly, but not solely, in the federalist movement for European integration. The idea that violations of human rights, in the form of experiments without consent, torture, death by starvation, systematic discrimination on religious grounds, racial grounds, incapacity or disability, and the denial of basic human needs were an affront to human dignity, is captured in the long list of civil, political, social, cultural and economic rights contained in the UDHR and in the much shorter list of civil and political rights in the European Convention on Human Rights. By contrast, human dignity and human rights are relatively recent additions to the foundational Treaties of the European Union but are ubiquitous in the new wave of European human rights texts and legislation concerned with uses of new biotechnologies. This paper analyses the evolving meaning of human dignity as a constitutionally protected fundamental value and right in the legal architecture of the European Union and the Council of Europe. It identifies critical differences in the meaning and extension of the principle to biological life from its application to persons already born and argues that the asymmetry reflects the continuing diversity of moral and religious cultures in Europe which has important implications for adjudication by the two supranational European courts.
