Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2012-04-19-Speech-4-440-000"
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"en.20120419.18.4-440-000"2
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"Madam President, looking at the gallery, I think that they must have wondered what kind of circus they had stumbled into. The European Union is based solely on absolute fundamental universal human rights. Yes, the Court needs reform – nobody argues with that – but the way to reform it is by being engaged with it. In order to have coherence between national law and EU law, it is vital that the EU accedes to the European Convention on Human Rights. And of course, judges never deliver judgments which please politicians all of the time, and that is good. Because they are there to give a voice to people who are often trampled underfoot.
I want you to imagine that there are citizens living in one country of the European Union who are not allowed to serve in the military, who do not have a right to a family life, who have no succession of housing when their partner dies, whose very sexuality is criminalised, for whom there is not an equal age of consent, nor equal treatment. Their only recourse – those citizens living in the United Kingdom, those lesbians and gay men and bisexuals – was to the European Court of Human Rights, and because of their judgments, they were afforded – eventually – universality and respect for their human rights.
Now if a government does not agree with the judgments, it also has the opportunity to derogate from the judgment, for it to go back to the national parliament. That is exactly what happened when the judgment was given that the ban on prisoners being forbidden the right to vote was in contravention. The UK Parliament merely had to note that and continue with what it was doing. But you know what? The world is a better place if somewhere like the European Court of Human Rights makes the lives of politicians more difficult."@en1
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