Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-25-Speech-2-213"
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"Madam President, I am very pleased to be here today speaking on an issue that is central to our common European values. Opposition to the death penalty is an integral part of the EU’s human rights policy and was the subject of the first EU human rights guidelines. Those guidelines, as you well know, ladies and gentlemen, have since 1998 set out the main aspects of the EU approach to that question, thus crystallising our well-known opposition to the death penalty.
What is at stake is nothing more and nothing less than our credibility as leaders of the global efforts to abolish the death penalty. That was why the Council considered it necessary to be well prepared and to have enough time to form a cross-regional alliance. That would not have been possible at the time of the 61st General Assembly, as some of you would have preferred. It was not only the Council’s experts who were of that opinion. Several NGOs which lead the fight in this field, such as the Coalition Against the Death Penalty, asked us not to be too hasty in submitting the resolution but to wait long enough to guarantee its success. That was exactly the path we followed. The Council decision of 18 June to introduce a resolution at the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly marked the beginning of a new phase in the multilateral sphere.
The Council, the Presidency and the Member States have each played their role to put the Council’s decision into practice. Even before the summer holiday the CFSP Working Party on Human Rights had decided on the approach to be taken – that is, for the EU Member States to agree on a draft text and, in a second phase, find other co-authors from various regions of the world; that was done, so that at the end of August there was a first meeting with all the co-authors in New York. Within the space of two weeks agreement was reached on the wording. We are now launching a lobbying campaign to have co-sponsors of our draft resolution. As I speak, our embassies throughout the world are sounding out possible supporters of our initiative. We are doing everything possible to win maximum support in order to make this resolution a success.
In that spirit, ladies and gentlemen, I ask for your confidence and support to enable us to carry out that process. You will certainly be aware how difficult political negotiations can be. You will therefore understand that the Presidency needs a certain degree of flexibility and room for manoeuvre to manage and find the appropriate timetable for an initiative of such complexity, because this is a cross-regional initiative and the co-authors must also review the text and the strategy of this resolution; moreover, we must quickly make contact with a large number of possible co-sponsors, so that the initiative gains weight.
We have embarked upon a campaign which is also a great challenge, but I am convinced that if we take concerted action we shall make this initiative a success.
We might recall the Union’s objectives on the death penalty, as enshrined in the guidelines. The first objective is to work towards universal abolition of the death penalty as the policy view agreed and strongly held by all EU Member States.
The second objective is, for countries where the death penalty still exists, to call for its use to be progressively restricted and to insist that it be carried out according to minimum international standards. I am very pleased to be in this Chamber today to tell you of the latest developments in our fight to abolish the death penalty. As you know, we recently launched an important initiative to promote these EU objectives. I am, of course, referring to the Council’s decision of 18 June this year in which the European Union committed itself to introducing a resolution against the death penalty at the 62nd UN General Assembly as part of a cross-regional alliance.
Parliament called for the European Union to take such an initiative in two resolutions adopted this year in February and in April. Since the opening of the third session of the United Nations General Assembly is rapidly approaching, I realise that you will want to know how the Council has been preparing for that event. I shall tell you a little more in a few moments about the preparations we have in hand.
Before that, let me look back briefly over the period of almost 10 years since the guidelines on the death penalty were adopted. I should stress that we have achieved a great deal since 1998. We have developed a broad range of instruments in our campaign against the death penalty, from political action by means of demarches, declarations and multilateral diplomacy to financial support through the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights, an instrument created essentially thanks to the efforts of the European Parliament.
For example, between 1 July 2006 and 30 June 2007, the European Union made general demarches on the death penalty in 28 countries, from Bahrain to Zambia; we also made demarches on individual cases in various countries from Yemen to Iran; furthermore, there are frequent EU declarations on this subject. To give you an example which received fairly wide media coverage: in August this year the European Union issued a declaration on the 400th execution in Texas. I should also like to point out that the death penalty is also on the agenda of the human rights dialogues and consultations which we hold with third countries and we do not shy away from raising the question with any of them. Our confidence in effective multilateralism also takes the form of tireless action against the death penalty within the United Nations and other international bodies.
Every year from 1997 to 2005, the European Union submitted a resolution on the death penalty to the UN Commission on Human Rights and, re-launching our action in December 2006, the EU submitted a statement on the death penalty at the United Nations General Assembly initially bearing 85 signatures and later signed by 10 more countries. The Presidency of the European Union reiterated that December 2006 declaration at the opening of the fourth session of the Human Rights Council in March 2007.
Despite the continuing concern about the use of the death penalty, we are very pleased to note a global trend towards abolition or introducing a moratorium on the death penalty. More than half the countries in the world have already abolished capital punishment either by law or in practice: 133 countries, according to Amnesty International. I should like to believe that the European Union, including of course the European Parliament, has played a role, if only a modest one, in that trend towards abolition through our systematic and sustained action over the years. This brief list of the European Union’s actions against the death penalty is proof of our commitment to this cause and let me stress that we acknowledge that the European Parliament has been a loyal ally in our work, which brings me back to our current agenda item, that is, the resolution for the UN General Assembly calling for a moratorium and the abolition of the death penalty.
This initiative confirms that the European Union is at the forefront of abolitionist efforts throughout the world and that it will continue to oppose the death penalty in all cases and under any circumstances, since it considers it to be a cruel and inhuman punishment. There is a lot to be gained with this initiative, but also a lot to lose if we are not successful. We must not forget that this is our third attempt, I repeat, our third attempt to obtain a resolution on the death penalty at the United Nations General Assembly following our two failures in 1994 and 1999."@en1
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