Anger over decision to cancel grant for elections

Date: 20/03/1997

AMIDST moves to boost EU-Mexico relations, human rights groups have attacked the European Commission's recent decision to cancel a 340,000-ecu grant to fund the monitoring of elections for the governorship of Mexico City this July.

Human Rights Watch and the Mexican Academy of Human Rights, which was to have received the funding, claim that the Mexican Ambassador to the EU Manuel Armendariz put untoward pressure on the Union to abandon the grant.

Members of the European Parliament have also reacted angrily to the move, with German Green MEP Wilfried Telkämper demanding the Commission justify the decision.

Did it not send a “wrong, even dangerous signal”, he asked, especially in view of Mexico's reluctance to include a human rights clause in any trade and cooperation deal?

A Commission spokesman said that an answer was being drafted, but refused to comment until it was ready.

The Mexican mission to the Union justified pressure to stop the funding by arguing that there was no human rights element in the existing 1991 EU-Mexico cooperation agreement, and there was no precedent to justify such a grant. It also said that since around 90 million ecu were already being spent on ensuring the elections were clean, further observation was unnecessary.