Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-07-Speech-3-135"
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"en.20080507.15.3-135"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, policies to promote human rights first of all require effective international policy-making powers, which the EU has. Unfortunately, all too often, as with the report that we unanimously approved in committee, European policy is in fact the policy of the Member States. It is difficult to have a European policy on human rights when Member States impose their national interests to this degree.
However, when it comes to political will, and at times this is conquered thanks to the European Parliament, which has no international policy-making powers, we are able to make significant progress. Take the death penalty: three resolutions of this Parliament eventually secured an important European position for the moratorium on executions voted for at the United Nations in New York in December. Look at how Parliament proposed a European policy on Tibet with a resolution that we ratified at the last sitting.
Human rights instruments also exist, but all too often the European Union does not recognise their legality. We have human rights clauses in all of our cooperation agreements, and yet we do not have effective monitoring and temporary suspension mechanisms, because those clauses would really allow us to ensure respect for democracy in third countries.
Very often we, as Europe, have been critical of the USA in recent years because promoting democracy through military means has proved ineffective. That is true! However, we also need to find alternative instruments. We cannot simply say that weapons do not work, because otherwise we would be giving in to the temptation of pacifism and neutrality. Let us just say that that route carries the risk of being objectively useful for dictators.
Therefore, the weapon we have identified and which is explicitly mentioned in this report – I am genuinely sorry that there is actually a Socialist Group amendment seeking to delete this part – is the weapon of non-violence: Ghandian non-violence, to be precise, as a political instrument rather than a folkloric reference; non-violence founded on knowledge, founded on rights – creating rights, ensuring the survival of rights, protecting the right to life.
We see non-violence as a technology, and so we propose that 2010 should be designated ‘European Year of Non-Violence’, that the European Union should have an active policy with the Commission and the Council of promoting instruments of non-violence, helping dissidents, helping democratic opposition. This is crucial if we are to go beyond simply formally defending human rights documents and texts, and if we are to bring human rights to life in the context of dictatorships and ‘non-democracies’."@en1
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