EU moves to set the world to rights

Date: 09/01/1997

By Elizabeth Wise

THE European Union is starting the new year with sanctions against Burma and Nigeria, a warning finger raised towards Turkey and China, and even a row with Australia all because of human rights.

But the Union has not always acted as a world police officer. For years, the words 'human rights' were never mentioned in its dealings with other countries.

“We always had to be very careful. Human rights are the secret part of a country,” said a Commission official now charged with developing the Union's strategy around the world. “Talking about human rights was like taking their soul.”

The European Single Act did mention the words in its preamble, but Maastricht was the first to put them in the body of the EU treaties referring to them no less than five times.

Now they are an integral part of all the Union's dealings with outside nations. Near the top of every trade, cooperation or political agreement is a clause which warns signatories that the EU will be monitoring their record and that human rights abuses or undemocratic practices may cost them the privileges granted under the accord.

The Euro-Mediterranean agreements with North African and Middle Eastern countries, the Lomé Convention governing ties with 70 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations, and the accords with future EU members in central and eastern Europe all depend on this clause.

Western European governments even include it in texts formalising ties with developed countries.

“We are the only institution in the world which includes a clause in our agreements that says human rights are essential,” said the Commission official.

Until 1995, the clause was included in agreements signed by the EU and its partners after negotiations. But in May 1995, Union governments voted to make it an automatic, non-negotiable part of any accord.

Some countries regard that as an insulting judgement on their own customs. Asians, Arabs and Latin Americans have their own ways of governing and resent any attempt by the Union to dictate philosophies to them.

But EU officials say proselytising is not their aim. “We are trying to strike a balance: not imposing a model on governments, but also not accepting any degradation of the principles,” said one Commission official working with Middle Eastern nations.

When developing countries complain that the Union is being patronising or paternalistic, EU officials respond by stressing that the human rights conditions attached to their accords are only those that have already been approved in international fora such as the United Nations and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

“We are only inscribing internationally accepted conventions into our rules,” said one. “We are not applying colonial values.”

But some countries remain sceptical nevertheless.

At ACP headquarters, where diplomats have watched the Union suddenly suspend and then restore ties with one African nation, some maintain that the clause is used by the EU as an escape hatch.

“We agree with the human rights principles in the clause, but the Europeans tend to jump on any excuse,” said one.

When the Union suspended Niger from Lomé immediately after a coup d'état, many African diplomats felt the EU was applying the clause to an internal political situation which it had not even fully examined.

It is not only African diplomats who fear the EU may use this to back out of a deal at any moment.

The Union is currently negotiating a framework trade and cooperation agreement with Australia and wants the standard human rights clause included. This, along with disputes in a few other areas, has threatened to derail negotiations.

“Our concern is that it could allow either party to suspend or terminate the agreement without prior notice,” said an Australian diplomat. “We do not think that is useful.”

Sydney says the clause should not be in the text of the accord, which deals mostly with trade issues, but rather in the accompanying political declaration.

“The issue is not whether human rights should be addressed, but the fact that the EU wants it to go into the trade element of the agreement. Australia's view is that that is not the appropriate place,” said the diplomat. “We see it as a political issue rather than a trade issue.”

So do many EU member states, which regularly strike their own bilateral deals with countries that are widely acknowledged to have human rights problems.

“The member states can drive a coach and horses through the loopholes. The human rights clauses mean very little,” said one member of a human rights organisation.

It has taken many EU governments some time to jump on the human rights bandwagon. The European Commission itself was also slow to add a democracy component to its relations with nations around the world. It eventually did so because of pressure from the European Parliament, which allocated money in the budget and obliged the Commission to use it.

The first budget line was 5 million ecu in the Union's 1992 spending plan, later dubbed the European Democracy Initiative. The Commission used the money to launch the Phare and Tacis democracy programmes for central and eastern Europe and the new nations of the former Soviet Union.

A democracy programme for the 12 Mediterranean nations of the Middle East and North Africa followed, and was first applied in 1996 with a budget of 9 million ecu.

This year, the Union will spend 78.6 million ecu on democracy and human rights projects in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The money will be used for schemes ranging from projects for street children in Brazil to village democracy in China, and even a planned Radio Free Africa to be beamed into Nigeria, where the military regime's oppression of democracy activists has cost the country 365 million ecu in development funds allocated to it until 1999 in the Lomé budget.

The EU will also, for the first time, contribute to financing the international war crimes tribunals on Bosnia and Rwanda.

Officials implementing many of these projects claim that there is still not enough money to cope with the huge task of reinforcing democratic institutions and providing legal training.

But the European Parliament has given the Commission a free hand, for the first time, to take money from the 1997 budget earmarked for other purposes and use it to promote democracy.

British Conservative MEP Edward McMillan-Scott, the architect of the EU budget line entitled the 'European initiative for democracy and human rights', has been a driving force behind this new development.

“There will be a new impetus for democracy and human rights in 1997,” he said, welcoming the gathering momentum in the Commission, Parliament and Council of Ministers behind such activities.

The emphasis on democratic criteria will become more apparent as the Union begins to put the ten nations applying for EU membership through their final paces.

The Commission and the Parliament are working on plans for a 'democracy summit' this spring to conduct a formal evaluation of the applicants' democratic credentials.

“We will be using democratic progress as a measure of their readiness [for membership],” said McMillan-Scott.

The MEP insists that the Union must continue to demand democratic standards, even beyond the borders of eastern Europe.

“It is a question of security for Europe. We must have neighbours that are democratic,” he said, adding that whether in discussions about future EU membership or in a trade agreement with China, “it is right that we call up these questions”.