Fears over human rights duplication

By David Cronin

Date: 17/02/05

With racism reportedly growing and civil liberties being eroded as part of the fight against terrorism, it seems that Europe needs a more vigilant monitoring of human rights.

In theory, the EU's planned fundamental rights agency will plug at least part of the gap. Fears are, however, being raised that its effectiveness would be diminished because it would overlap with the work of Europe's 'oldest' political body, the 55-year-old Council of Europe.

Terry Davis, the Council's secretary-general, said: "With the best will in the world, I can't figure out what it [the agency] is going to do." He urged that the likelihood of duplication be addressed at the Council of Europe's Warsaw summit in May.

According to Davis, there is already a "tremendous overlap" between his 46-country body, the EU and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). All three, for example, are heavily involved in investigating electoral fraud. Tensions between election observers from the Council and the OSCE have been found in Georgia and Ukraine, Davis told the Financial Times.

The European Commission is scheduled to publish proposals on the agency's remit in the coming months. These should clarify if it will encroach on work traditionally undertaken by the Council of Europe. The latter's best-known - and most controversial - structure is the European Court of Human Rights. On several occasions, the Strasbourg-based court has found EU member states wanting; in the 1980s-90s the Court handed down a series of verdicts stating that Britain breached fundamental human rights during the Northern Ireland conflict.

Among the Council's other human rights outlets are the Committee on the Prevention of Torture, which regularly issues hard-hitting reports about prison conditions throughout Europe.

Last month the Commission held a public hearing on the agency. Some submissions to that conference made several similar points to those raised by Davis. The International Lesbian and Gay Association said there was "a risk of overlap and duplication of work or huge gaps" between the Council of Europe and the EU; it called, too, for agreements defining the links between the various European and international bodies involved in human rights monitoring.

While the Commission is still grappling with various questions about the agency, it appears likely that it will recommend that its geographical scope should be confined to assessing human rights problems within the Union. This idea was contained in a paper published by the EU executive last year and won broad support at the recent hearing.

But there was consternation among campaign groups about the prospect that the agency could be poorly resourced, given that the Commission envisages it will have "a lightweight structure in terms of staff and budget". Dick Oosting, director of Amnesty International's Brussels office, is worried that "it might end up as a toothless, little sideshow", with EU countries refusing to give it adequate powers to oversee their compliance with human rights standards.

Amnesty considers that the Commission has not yet given sufficient details about what role the agency will play in relation to Article 7 of the EU treaty, under which a member state may have its voting rights suspended in cases of serious abuses of the Union's fundamental values. The group advocates that the agency should "not be restricted to being a mere early warning system for such breaches" but should be a tool for improving the Union's human rights record through monitoring and recommendations.

It is expected that one of the agency's primary functions will be to collate statistics. Yet the British Refugee Council has warned that this "is only a meaningful activity if it has a defined purpose".

The Vienna-based EU Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which the agency will replace, "appeared to have difficulties using its data for policymaking or practical purposes", according to the Refugee Council. The group therefore wants EU institutions to be obliged to respond to opinions formed by the agency and says it should be systematically consulted when new laws and policies are being drawn up.

The European Roma Rights Centre in Budapest contends that the discussions about the agency's mandate afford an opportunity to assess the gulf between developing standards on basic rights and ensuring they are upheld. One "graphic example" of the gap, says the centre, was a European Parliament debate in March last year on Slovakia's readiness for EU membership.

Although the Council of Europe had presented evidence that women from the Roma community in eastern Slovakia were being threatened with forced sterilisation by doctors, MEPs decided not to demand that this be monitored after the country joined the EU in May 2004.

The human rights agency might plug the gap between the theory and reality of human rights in the EU.

Article reports on concerns that there might be a substantial overlap in human rights monitoring with the EU's planned Fundamental Rights Agency working in fields which have traditionally been covered by other institutions such as the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).