Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-17-Speech-3-175"
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"en.20060517.19.3-175"2
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Mr President, let me begin on a personal note: this is my third opportunity to speak in this House about the broad issues of human rights. As far as the Austrian Presidency is concerned, this issue is very dear to our hearts and we want to deal with it in a way that corresponds to what the rapporteur has just said. We want the European Union as a whole to be perceived by our partners and by the outside world as speaking with one voice and conveying the values of the European Union. As Mr Howitt said, we have to practise what we preach. This is very much what the Presidency is trying to do.
The subject of torture and inhumane treatment is of course an important one, and it is one that we keep on raising in our human rights dialogues with third countries. Having visited Kazakhstan, where we engaged in political dialogues with the countries of Central Asia, and more recently, the region of the Southern Caucasus, I myself can say that the European Union has always been very forthright in addressing the issue of torture and inhumane treatment, as well as human rights matters in general.
Elections to the UN Human Rights Council were held a matter of a few days ago, and I am sure that we can generally be satisfied with them, since it turned out that certain states who are notorious violators of human rights were not elected after all, and the European Union had in fact given an undertaking not to vote for countries known to have a poor record on human rights.
The Human Rights Council will meet for the first time on 19 June, in other words, before the end of our presidency. Our desire is that this new United Nation body should, in future, make a constructive and essential contribution to working for human rights around the world.
In conclusion, I would like once more to emphasise the great importance of exchange between the institutions in terms of our work for human rights. Only an even-handed and universal human rights policy on the part of the European Union will get a hearing and, eventually, bear fruit.
The presentation of the European Union’s annual report on human rights to your House in December, an occasion on which you traditionally highlight human rights priorities by presenting the Sakharov Prize, and your House’s response to that report, makes an important contribution towards that end.
Our common goal is an effective and visible human rights policy for the European Union, which will see us standing up for our values. The European Parliament is making a significant contribution in this respect, to which tribute was paid in the European Union’s annual report for 2005. The European Parliament’s achievements should and will receive due recognition in the forthcoming annual report, which will be prepared under the Finnish Presidency. I would like, once again to extend warm thanks to the rapporteur for this outstanding report.
I should like to begin by thanking the European Parliament for its cooperation and we should also like to thank the Commissioner and the Commission for their contributions.
We are grateful this year that, for the first time, Parliament has adopted a comprehensive approach. It has not just listed one human rights violation after another in a given country but has adopted a comprehensive approach and policy, which the Council very much appreciates.
To those – be they women or men – who are threatened and tortured for standing up for human rights, it is irrelevant whether the European Union now speaks through Parliament, the Council or the Commission. The important thing is that we in the European Union should speak at all. People who rely on help from the European Union do so irrespective of the institution, and that is why cooperation between the institutions is so very important.
I would like, at this point, to make reference to something that is very important to me personally, even though it may well not be directly connected with the report. The Austrian Presidency is endeavouring, if at all possible, to set up the Fundamental Rights Agency, and to bring about a final agreement on it, before our presidency comes to an end. We had, this morning, a highly constructive sitting with Parliament and the Commission, in the course of which we agreed on the basis outlines of what this Fundamental Rights Agency is going to be like. I would ask you all to play your parts in this, in order that this important institution, which is to represent the European Union as a whole to the outside world, may take concrete form as soon as possible. The Presidency will be working very hard to that end.
We have closely examined the report, and we are appreciative of the efforts of the rapporteur and of all the Members of your House who worked on it. I would just like to give particular attention to a few points. The first has to do with the human rights guidelines, which the report quite rightly emphasises, and which is of great significance in terms of the more effective implementation of EU policy. At the heart of all that we do is the worldwide abolition of the death penalty and of torture, along with the protection of human rights activists and of children caught up in armed conflict, and I would like to mention the fact that Austrian foreign policy over recent years, not least under the aegis of Mrs Ferrero-Waldner – who is now a Commissioner – focused particularly on these issues.
We welcome your House’s work, in particular that of the Human Rights Sub-Committee, towards the better implementation of the anti-torture guidelines and also your time-honoured commitment to the prevention of human rights violations. The present Austrian President of the Foreign Affairs Council, Mrs Plassnik, takes these matters extremely seriously; in the run-up to the summit between the EU, Latin America and the Caribbean, she received human rights campaigners from that region and assured them of the European Union’s support.
Passing on to the subject of the anti-torture guidelines, we repeatedly hear it said that the European Union does not do enough in individual cases. We are of course well aware of the fact that whether or not people detained in police custody are treated humanely is often something that is determined within hours, and, true though this is, we must also be honest with ourselves and admit the regrettable fact that our options are often limited. Within the scope afforded by those options, the European Union does speak out very strongly in cases where people face the threat of torture and inhumane treatment, but we regret our inability to prevent them in every case.
The implementation of the United Nations Convention against Torture, and cooperation with the UN’s human rights apparatus generally, was, during our presidency, an essential part of our human rights policy; in this respect we were doing no more than continuing the European Union’s traditional policy, and initiated démarches on the subject in over twenty-five countries."@en1
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