Verbatim report of proceedings

Wednesday, 21 April 2004 - Strasbourg

Human rights in 2003 and EU policy

  Gahler (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, protection of human rights is, traditionally, one of the core issues for the European Parliament, and there is in fact political consensus on how to handle it. The standards to be applied are to be found in the international agreements protecting human rights. Those breaching these standards or negligently allowing them to be breached must come in for criticism from this House.

This year’s report, however – in contrast to all its predecessors during this legislative period – has not been born under an auspicious star. Our main point of criticism is that the rapporteur has laden down what is meant to be an annual report on human rights with an unacceptable amount of ideological ballast, and made her own hobbyhorses, not to say obsessions, its central point. That, for a start, is why it lacks a general and uncontentious component, which has been introduced into the text only by dint of 70 amendments. Let me reiterate, for the sake of absolute clarity, that such a report has to be about the big issues, that is to say, about questions like: where do we demand democracy, free elections, freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, freedom of faith and conscience, the removal of legal and practical discrimination against women, the protection of physical integrity and so on? For what do we criticise the Council, particularly when, in its dealings with large countries, it pays only lip service to human rights?

It goes without saying that reference in such a report to the rights of – for example – the disabled is only right and proper. Of course, their rights as citizens of the State with equal status must be enforced, and demeaning treatment in public facilities must be denounced. Within the limits of what individual States can do, the human right to life also includes the right of access to health facilities, but you must stop dressing up detailed demands in health and social policy – desirable though they may be – as a catalogue of human rights and immortalise them in this report. The fact is that those things that are guaranteed as human rights can be claimed as legal entitlements, and those who fail to provide them are violating human rights, but no single constitution, not one international convention – European or otherwise – declares the detailed demands you make here to be actionable human rights. If they were to do so, the Mayor of Rabat or his counterpart in Lagos would be violating human rights by failing to comply with your demand that the city’s buses should be equipped with doors that disabled people can use. Failure to do so may well make him a bad mayor, but he is not violating human rights. This shows just how false your approach is. There is no human right to the distribution of free condoms either, but, in this case, it is a goal to be achieved. The President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, may well have the wrong idea about how to combat Aids, but that does not make him a violator of human rights.

This House has before it Mr Mantovani’s outstanding report on the situation of disabled people, and it is the proper place for all the things you enumerate, but then you would be able only to table amendments and the report would not carry your name. Let me tell you, Mr Mantovani’s report puts it all so much better; that is why we will be voting for his report and not for yours.

As for your other hobbyhorse, reproductive health, that belongs in the Committee on Development and Cooperation or in the Junker report on 10 years after Cairo – in fact, it is already in there – but not, in this form, in the category of guaranteed and actionable human rights. From whom, then, do you intend demanding it? This is where you and I are often not that far removed from each other; I too am against this Mexico City policy. I am also the first to want Catholic mission stations to hand out condoms rather than anathematise them, but when you demand that we in the EU make up for the loss of funds from the USA, that, I think, is when others will get the idea of saving their money; after all, the EU will take over, will it not? The consensus on human rights in this House has lasted for many years, but, as I see it, your report does nothing to help maintain it.