European Voice, 04/12/2013
Thirteen years ago, the adoption of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights sparked hope that the long process of European integration would finally be propelled by a stronger emphasis on its human rights dimension. This hope was reinforced in 2007, with the establishment of a specialised European Union agency on fundamental rights and the reforming Treaty of Lisbon, which sets out the Union’s obligation to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights.
And yet, despite the new legal and political framework, and the extensive good work done by the fundamental rights agency, human rights in the EU remain more often than not an issue “for export” than for domestic consumption.
This has become particularly clear to me during my meetings with representatives of the EU, who generally wish to discuss the situation of human rights outside the 28 member states. As if all was well within the EU.
Since I took up office as the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights a little more than 20 months ago, nine of my 15 country reports have been on EU member states. Furthermore, I have engaged in a dialogue with the national authorities of five additional EU countries on specific human-rights concerns.
The picture I draw from this work is that EU institutions, in particular the European Commission, have all too often been weak in addressing a number of human-rights issues in member states. It is true that the EU has limited legislative competence for many core human-rights areas which are better dealt with by the Council of Europe, such as freedom of expression, the prohibition of torture, and the right to a fair trial.
However, I think the EU is also failing where it has a stronger competence.
One of the most topical of these issues is migration. The EU’s inaction, and sometimes complicity with widespread criminalisation of irregular migration, lengthy detention of migrants, ‘push-backs’, and inadequate asylum procedures expose this problem well. In addition, the system of Dublin returns, by which asylum-seekers are transferred back to the first country of entry, is unravelling due to legal challenges at both national and European levels. However, scrapping or fundamentally overhauling it remains a taboo subject for debate.
The EU’s scant progress on human rights also affects EU citizens. Take the fiscal-consolidation processes as an example. Without any real public participation, the EU has dictated a cure of austerity to heal public deficits. The result is that in many EU countries children’s health and prospects are worsening, unemployment is skyrocketing, and vulnerable groups, such as older people, are facing destitution because of cuts to the welfare system.
Persons with disabilities are not better off, despite the fact that the EU is party to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. A crucial provision of this treaty is the right of persons with disabilities to live independently and be included in the community. Still, many EU governments continue to place persons with disabilities in institutions. Worse still, I continue to receive reports that EU structural funds are often used to refurbish existing institutions or even build new ones.
Finally, incomplete anti-discrimination frameworks have led to very uneven levels of protection on different grounds. EU member states often justify shortcomings by pointing to the EU anti-discrimination directives, which provide more protection on grounds of race and ethnicity than they do, for example, on grounds of sexual orientation. Other states find no serious obstacles in Brussels to keeping very weak anti-racist legislation or in implementing Roma integration strategies that do not include measures to combat anti-Gypsism.
These examples show that the EU has still a long way to go before claiming any victory in integrating human rights in the construction of Europe. While the EU’s promise on human rights is good news and needs to be supported, its deeds have to improve if it wants to leave a positive imprint on Europe’s future.
The EU has various options to get there, including requiring stringent enforcement of its legislation and better using existing standards and mechanisms, including outside the EU, to make the current system more effective. But one thing need not be done: reinventing the human-rights wheel. It only needs to turn more smoothly.
Nils Muižnieks