Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-14-Speech-2-091"
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"en.20001114.4.2-091"2
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".
SOS Democracy rejects the Charter of Fundamental Rights on three grounds. First, that it is unnecessary. Second, that it is undemocratic. And third, that it is likely to restrict, rather than enhancing, the freedom of Europe's peoples. We shall offer a brief explanation of these three objections in order.
Human rights are already respected in the EU, and safeguarded by national constitutional provisions according to the different customs of the Member States. The Charter now provides a mechanism to circumscribe or override these rights, without even pretending to offer any new ones.
It is a proud boast of many Europeans that we are free to do anything which is not expressly prohibited in law. Yet now it is proposed that we be "given" our rights by European judges. SOS Democracy rejects the notion that we should depend on the EU to bestow our own freedoms upon us. In the words of Aldous Huxley: "Liberties are not given: they are taken".
Ratifying the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms would be one of the most ambitious steps ever taken by the European Union. Before doing something of such magnitude, we should ask the question: where in Western Europe is the monstrous violation of human rights that this document would address? We are dealing, after all, with 15 modern democracies, not with 15 Rwandas.
Every Member State is already bound by the European Convention on Human Rights, the UN's Universal Declaration and a host of lesser accords. Why does the EU, as such, need to muscle in on this territory?
No one has yet answered that question. Indeed, Roman Herzog, president of the drafting convention, has gone out of his way to claim that the Charter will not create any new rights. If so, it seems strange to enact so great a constitutional revolution for such small purported gain.
Human rights may not be under immediate threat in the EU, but accountable democracy is. The Charter will involve the European Court of Justice in a number of political decisions, in fields as diverse as employment law, extradition policy, immigration and the family. To the extent that no one has elected the judges, this represents a diminution of democratic government.
More than this, the Charter will oblige the ECJ to strike down national legislative acts, or even provisions of state constitutions, in several new areas of policy. Since the ECJ, on the basis of the far more restricted text of the existing European treaties, has already displayed a worrying tendency towards judicial activism, this problem is likely to be especially acute.
Even those who accept the case for a written EU constitution should hesitate as they contemplate some of the Charter's provisions.
Of greatest concern is Article 52, which provides for the rights referred to elsewhere in the document to be set aside where they conflict with the "general interest recognised by the Union". This reintroduces the concept of "
" which the Council of Europe has spent the last half-century seeking to eradicate. The right of a government arbitrarily to set aside its own constitution is the defining characteristic of a tyranny. In Nazi Germany, for example, this provision existed under the so-called "Enabling Act".
Less dramatically, but no less important, the Charter is badly drafted. Take, for example, Article 21, which prohibits "any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation". Taken literally, this article would mean that a socialist party would not be allowed to discriminate against conservatives who wanted to run as its candidates, or that an opera company would have to offer soprano roles to men. How such vaguely drafted provisions will be used in the hands of an activist court is anyone's guess."@en1
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"Berthu, Bonde, Camre, Deva, Hannan, Helmer, Ribeiro e Castro and Sumberg,"1
"raison d'Etat"1
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