Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-18-Speech-4-202"
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"en.20000518.7.4-202"2
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"Mr President, in mediaeval times groups of thugs and hooligans would pick on elderly women and accuse them of witchcraft. They would throw them into the village pond. If the poor souls drowned, they were shown to be innocent; if they survived, it proved their guilt and they were then burned at the stake. Either way, the result is the same.
This legislation is unnecessary at a European level. Most Member States already have their own anti-discrimination measures designed to suit their own culture and their own circumstances.
I am proud to say that I am opposed to discrimination and racism in all its forms, but this irrational and unjust legislation will bring Europe further into disrepute among many of my constituents. I am pleased to say that the rest of my delegation will be joining me in opposing it.
We had a similar example in 20th century China during the Cultural Revolution. Red Guards would accuse intellectuals of bourgeois thinking. If they confessed, they were guilty – but, of course, redeemable – but if they denied the charge, they were condemned out of their own mouths because they failed to recognise their guilt. In both of those cases, we see the danger of placing the burden of proof on the accused. Our justice systems have always rightly placed the burden of proof on the accuser, not on the defendant. They have always assumed that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
Now, in 21st century Europe, we are proposing to abandon this fundamental principle of justice and instead to adopt the approach of the mediaeval witch-finders and the Chinese Red Guards. We propose to put the burden of proof on the defendant, and we even have amendments that would further pass the benefit of doubt to the accuser and not to the accused.
Then there is the issue of malicious allegations – in which, sadly, we have seen a huge increase – putting a lot of employers to great expense and to great cost. My own party was accused by a lot of left-wingers of racism because it spoke out on the issue of asylum-seekers in the United Kingdom.
In the case of employers, even if an employer manages to mount a successful defence to these unjustified cases, the time and anxiety of a tribunal or a court hearing will be a huge imposition. Given the bias of this legislation in favour of the accuser and the prevailing climate of political correctness that we seem to be obsessed with, even many innocent employers will frequently lose their cases, incurring penalties, as well as court costs and lost time.
This legislation, I am sorry to say, is an invitation to trouble makers and those with chips on their shoulders to bring frivolous and vexatious complaints, or possibly to use even the threat of a complaint to secure financial compensation.
There is, of course, another danger, and that is that employers, aware of the risk of complaints from unsuccessful ethnic minority candidates, may even avoid putting them on short lists altogether, which would be a terrible disaster and completely against the spirit of the legislation. As so often in this House, we have failed to think through the possible unintended consequences."@en1
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