EU Charter of Fundamental Human Rights

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The budget for the special representative and his or her office and team has to be found from within the existing budget of the External Action Service. It will therefore have to be found at the expense of other potential items of expenditure. I have no doubt that some people will argue that, given the creation of the role, a bigger budget is needed, as with any EU special representative role, but we do not accept that. We continually resist calls for increases in annual and multi-annual budgets and seek to bear down on the costs of, and to secure better value for money in, individual special representatives’ missions and common security and defence missions more generally. I do not want my hon. Friend to think that this will lead to a vast new bill.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

Some members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have a different view from the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). Some of us hope that the fundamental focus of the Council of Europe on human rights might reinfect the body politic of the European Union and add human rights to some of the agreed trade policies that have ignored human rights.

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point for the record.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

It is important to put on the record that I supported giving the Minister a waiver so that he could go to the Council and support this document, rather than having to break the scrutiny reserve if he had to do so. The reason was that we were going to have a debate anyway, and in the document there is much to support. I want people outside who listen to this debate and who do not spend all their time reading European documents to know exactly what we are supporting.

On 25 June 2012, EU Foreign Ministers adopted an ambitious EU strategic framework and action plan on human rights and democracy. It included an ambitious human rights package consisting of 36 policy areas, ranging from the fight against the death penalty, effective support for democracy, the eradication of torture and the promotion and protection of children’s rights. A division of that work into not fewer than 97 actions has been agreed, and I hope will come into effect, in full respect of national competences—a point made by the Minister. Indeed, only with a joint commitment between the EU and its member states can change be made on the ground.

The action plan sets out a wide variety of external policy activity agreed by all member states. The 97 potential actions have seven headings: human rights and democracy throughout EU policy; promoting the universality of human rights; pursuing coherent policy objectives; human rights in all EU external policies; implementing EU priorities on human rights; working with bilateral partners; and working with the multilateral institutions. The last one is very important because the non-governmental organisations now feel that they have been invited in to the discussions in a way that they have not felt the EU institutions have dealt with them in the past.

The appointment of a human rights representative or envoy will be the first ever thematic envoy. There are many at the moment in parts of the world, but not on a theme such as human rights, and that will be fundamentally important.

The document assigns responsibility for each proposed action to the European External Action Service, member states, the Commission or a combination of two or more of them. It is clear that there is a commitment to consolidate consultations with civil society, which is fundamental.

I think that when these measures are combined with the decision of the EU to sign up to the convention on human rights, there has to be a fundamental rethink of how the EU carries out its policies. The director of Amnesty International’s European institutions office, Nicolas Beger, who was today debating with me in another place on this issue, said:

“We never thought we would see such a positive move forward”.

He commended Cathy Ashton, who has done so much in a way that people did not believe possible. As Hollande said to Sarkozy, “The reason you lost is you underestimated me.” We underestimated Cathy Ashton’s ability to deliver.

We have to ask the EU to look again at its trade agreements. If they are in breach of human rights, which are fundamental to the Council of Europe, the EU has to consider why it did not take on human rights conditions in Colombia, Israel, Peru and Sri Lanka, and it must look again at conditions in Turkey. All of them contain breaches of human rights. If this is going to work, the action plan and the envoy must speak up for human rights defenders before they are thrown into jail or killed by repressive regimes, and we must make sure that we do not sign trade agreements that allow continued breaches of human rights. That is what I see in this policy, and I hope that, by supporting it, we will see forward movement that we have not seen from the EU for some time.