Paris abandons fight for binding charter

Date: 28/09/00

By John Shelley

FRANCE is giving up the fight to make the planned new EU charter of fundamental rights legally binding in a bid to win support for some of its most controversial clauses.

The 62-strong group of politicians and officials tasked with drawing up the document held their final drafting meeting this week, and will hand over the proposed text to the French presidency at a ceremonial meeting next week (2 October).

But hopes that the charter would be enshrined in Union law as part of the new treaty due to be agreed at the Nice summit in December look set to be dashed.

The French presidency, which is in the driving seat at the Intergovernmental Conference negotiations, has long argued in favour of making the charter legally binding. But it has now abandoned plans to put the issue on the IGC agenda and is instead pushing for the text to be adopted as a declaration with no legal status.

Although Paris insists it is still committed to incorporating the charter into the EU treaty eventually, it is willing to sacrifice doing so this year if it means getting agreement on a document with powerful social rights. "If we want the charter to be written into the treaty at the end of the year, then we will not get rights like access to health care into it," said French Social Affairs Minister Maritine Aubry.

Paris' decision to give up the fight for a legally-binding text has come as a bitter blow to many involved in its drafting. "The way the French presidency is approaching the IGC is neither constructive or creative," said British Liberal MEP and convention member Andrew Duff.

But it has come as no surprise to observers who believed moves towards including more social rights in the document during the final days of the convention's negotiations would make it unacceptable to the UK as a legal text.

The draft charter drawn up by the convention contains 54 articles divided into seven sections under the headings dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity, citizens' rights, justice and a final chapter on scope.

The most controversial component - solidarity - includes workers' rights to consultation, collective bargaining and to strike, and a general right to health care. It also contains a ban on reproductive cloning of humans, data protection assurances and a guarantee on environmental protection.

The general provisions include a section which states the charter gives no new powers to the Union. Supporters of the move to make the document legally binding say this means no country should be afraid to agree to this because it is no more than a consolidation of existing EU law.

Duff is still hopeful that countries in favour of incorporating the charter into the Union treaty, led by Germany, will put enough pressure on fellow member state leaders at next month's Biarritz summit to get the charter onto the IGC agenda. He says it could be attached to the treaty as a protocol or a preamble, giving it some legal force, or EU governments could agree in principle to write the charter into the treaty at a later stage.

France is giving up the fight to make the planned new EU charter of fundamental rights legally binding in a bid to win support for some of its most controversial clauses.