Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-25-Speech-3-214"
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"en.20001025.9.3-214"2
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". – This Parliament and, for what it is worth, this Commissioner, have been long-standing opponents of the death penalty. Speaking for myself, I voted consistently against it when I was a member of another parliament. One of the first decisions that I took when I was Governor of Hong Kong, with the support of organisations like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, was to take the death penalty off the statute book of Hong Kong and I am delighted that it remains off the statute book.
In 1999 a joint programme was established between the Commission and the Council of Europe to raise public awareness about various themes related to the abolition of the death penalty in Russia, Turkey, Albania and Ukraine. The programme, worth over EUR 670 000 over two years, will provide information to parliamentarians, to legal experts and to the general public on the penal policy arguments against capital punishment.
Let me repeat, this is a subject we take seriously. It is a subject which I personally take extremely seriously. We speak on it as a Union with a degree of moral authority. We are making progress. But it will take time and persistence as well as the continued advocacy of this Parliament if we are to attain one day our goal, which is to see the death penalty consigned to the history books as a form of punishment which has absolutely no place in the modern world.
Parliament has declared in the past that it considers capital punishment an inhuman, medieval form of punishment and unworthy of modern societies. I know that many people would echo that sentiment. I am pleased that all Central and Eastern European countries which are candidates for membership of the Union have abolished the death penalty. We are moving towards a Europe in which the death penalty is outlawed continent-wide. The European Union is opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances and has agreed to campaign for its universal abolition. That stance is rooted in our belief in the inherent dignity of all human beings and in the inviolability of the human person. In my case, my opposition to the death penalty is also rooted in my belief in the sanctity of human life.
Some 87 states retain the death penalty and about 30 carry out executions in any given year. One or two states carry out executions in industrial quantities. The European Union has been for some time now actively seeking a global moratorium. The Union has defined a set of guidelines for identifying circumstances in which the European Union can take specific, targeted action. These guidelines specify that the European Union will encourage states to accede to the second optional protocol of the Convention on Civil and Political Rights and comparable regional mechanisms aimed at the abolition of the death penalty. We will also raise the issue of the death penalty in multilateral forums.
The European Union shares the deep concern of all those opposed to the death penalty, that it is impossible to reduce to zero the risk of applying the penalty in error. That risk, the risk of taking innocent life, is reason enough in the view of many of us to outlaw it as a punishment. Nor do we accept the argument that the death penalty is a deterrent to violent crime since in our countries the evidence simply does not support that claim.
In countries which maintain the death penalty, the European Union aims at the progressive restriction of its scope and respect for the strict conditions set out in several international human rights instruments under which capital punishment may be used, as well as at the establishment of a moratorium on executions, so as to eliminate completely the death penalty.
During the presidencies of Finland and Portugal, the European Union raised the issue of the death penalty with a host of countries including the authorities in Antigua and Barbuda, Burundi, the Bahamas, China, Guyana, India, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, the Palestinian Authority, Pakistan, the Philippines, Tajikistan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Uzbekistan, the Yemen and Zimbabwe. In the case of China, we used the forum of our dialogue on human rights to press the issue time and again. I regret that China continues to make almost daily use of the death penalty.
The European Union is especially concerned about the imposition of the death penalty on young people below 18 years of age at the time of the commission of the crime. The European approach to juvenile justice is consistent with internationally recognised juvenile justice standards as enshrined in the international human rights instruments.
I said at the outset that the European Union had decided to raise the issue of the death penalty in multilateral fora. This has not always been simple. The House will recall that following intensive negotiation, we decided at last year's UN General Assembly in November that no resolution was better than a fatally flawed text and that therefore the European Union should not pursue its initiative in the United Nations General Assembly. This April's UN Commission on Human Rights resolution was, however, adopted with a clear majority, I am extremely pleased to say. It would seem that while the hard-line retentionists are resigned to further Commission on Human Rights texts on this issue, they will continue to resist strongly any efforts to secure a General Assembly resolution. This would lead to further divisive debate. As a result the European Union has decided that it would not be either advisable or timely to table a resolution on the death penalty at UNGA 55.
In the meantime we continue to support campaigns designed to achieve a moratorium on the death penalty and executions, and eventually the abolition of capital punishment throughout the world. We do so under the budget lines that fall under the chapter "European initiative for democracy and human rights". In particular under budget line B7-704 we are pursuing a number of initiatives throughout the world designed to mobilise public opinion against the death penalty."@en1
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