EU urged to look within
12 December 2000
The European Roma Rights Center, an international public interest law organisation which documents the situation of Roma throughout Europe and provides legal defence in cases of abuse, today expressed dismay that the European Union's second Annual Human Rights Forum, to be convened in Paris on December 13, continues the unfortunate EU tradition of treating human rights as a purely external matter. Notwithstanding the near-unanimous pleas of NGOs at last fall's first Human Rights Discussion Forum for future meetings to address also human rights issues internal to EU member states, the Paris meeting will again ignore these issues and instead have as its focus "the external action of the Union."
In declining an invitation to attend, Dimitrina Petrova, Executive Director of ERRC, stated, "Racial discrimination and growing anti-immigrant intolerance are only some of the serious human rights problems which plague many EU member states. We as well as other NGOs have been looking to the French Presidency and the Commission in Brussels to develop the framework for an open and forthright dialogue about these questions. Insofar as the EU took the trouble at last year's meeting to solicit NGO views, ERRC had hoped that the second EU human rights meeting would address them. The programme of the one-day conference in Paris clearly demonstrates that the much-criticised approach of the Union to human rights remains unchanged."
The agenda of the Paris meeting is all the more disappointing in light of the frequency with which European leaders have called for an end to an exclusively "outer-focused" EU human rights policy. In her opening remarks at last year's Discussion Forum, Finland's then Foreign Minister (and now President) Tarja Halonen declared, "In order to be credible, the EU must be consistent. It is very difficult to convince outsiders of the EU's priorities unless we are seen to be applying the same standards ourselves. The realization of human rights in the Union's internal and external dimensions are indeed two sides of the same coin. We should therefore look at the situation inside the EU area in relation to our external relations."
In its "Human Rights Agenda for the European Union for the Year 2000," the Comité des Sages of the European Commission, noting the widespread human rights violations within the Union, concluded, "A Union which is not prepared to embrace a strong human rights policy for itself is highly unlikely to develop a credible external policy, let alone to apply it with energy or consistency. As long as human rights within Europe are considered to be an area in which the Union has only a very limited role, their status in the Union's external policy will remain tenuous." And earlier this year, the "Wise Men" report on human rights in Austria "strongly recommend[ed] the development of a mechanism within the EU to monitor and evaluate the commitment and performance of individual Member States with respect to the common European values."
More than one year after the first annual Human Rights Forum held by the EU, there is little evidence that these views have been adequately taken into account by those responsible for developing the Union's human rights policy.
