Demand for treaty pledge on human rights policy

Date: 10/04/1997

A LEADING human rights organisation claims killings, torture, deaths in custody and ill-treatment of detainees are on the increase within the EU.

Amnesty accuses member states of failing to tackle the problem and is calling for human rights protection to be strengthened in the revised EU treaty being negotiated at the Intergovernmental Conference on Union reform.

“The problem arises because this is happening in the area of justice and home affairs so member states are not supposed to criticise each other. There is no system to deal with this at EU level,” said Marike Radstaake, of Amnesty's European Union Association.

While all 15 member states have individually ratified the European Convention on Human Rights, the Union as a body has not committed itself formally in international law to any human rights instrument.

Amnesty believes that this is important because it would make EU institutions subject to the same human rights scrutiny as the member states. It is also calling for a clause in the revised treaty to commit the Union to developing a system for measuring the impact its policies have on human rights abroad.

Radstaake claims the clause in Union agreements with third countries which says that human rights and democratic principles should be respected is ineffective. She says that although it is, in theory, a valuable instrument, it should be used more creatively.

“The question is how the European Commission is going to use this clause in a positive way, not just as a sanction,” she said.

Amnesty is also critical of the way EU member states are harmonising their asylum policies. It says such measures are becoming increasingly restrictive and break international obligations.

The organisation's criticisms have been echoed by the European Parliament, which this week attacked several Union governments for human rights violations. MEPs condemned the UK, Belgium and Greece for not ratifying a protocol in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights (ECHR) abolishing the death penalty.

The Parliament's third annual report on human rights in the EU - which, for the first time, looked at issues such as social protection and medical treatment - criticised the UK for opting out of the Union's social policy; France and Germany for allowing increasing numbers of local authorities to ban begging; Greece for restricting meetings of some ethnic minorities; Austria for discriminating laws on the age of consent for homosexuals; and Ireland for preventing the publication of pro-abortion material.