Relying on digital principles to complement existing rights: a human rights assessment of the 2022 European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles

On 15 December 2022, the European institutions signed the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles. The 2022-Declaration consists of both traditional rights enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and principles in the digital. This chapter analyses the format of the 2022-Declaration and its hybrid methodology. Particularly, it assesses the use of principles in the 2022-Declaration by looking at other fundamental rights documents and evaluates its normative and legal value in a human rights perspective. This chapter questions to what extent the rights-principles methodology of the 2022-Declaration, typical of the EU Charter, can afford individuals adequate protection in digital times. Drawing on literature review, it assesses whether an approach based on new digital rights codification is instead feasible in a human rights perspective. We note that more ambitious normative positions reliant on new digital rights codification may be justified on the basis of human rights law theories.