The European Parliament’s engagement in international human rights: Achievements, limitations and prospects

On February 21^st 2023, the European Studies Centre welcomed Dr Eamonn Noonan (EU Visiting Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford) to present the European Parliament’s role in promoting human rights internationally from the 1980s to the present. The presentation was chaired by Dr Hartmut Mayer (St Peter’s College, Oxford).

Using annual reports from the European Parliament, Noonan summarizes elements of continuity and change in the Parliament’s work through the decades. There is an interplay between three categories of human rights: (1) civil and political, (2) economic and social, and (3) solidarity and international cohesion. This division roughly corresponds to the slogan of the French Revolution: liberté, egalité, fraternité. In foreign policy, civil and political rights dominated in the 1980s. True, the European European Community from its foundation was engaged with social rights; the Treaty of Rome, for example, prohibited companies from cutting workers’ wages in certain circumstances. But these policies were not part of foreign policy. It was also true that the Council of Europe placed greater emphasis on political rights than social rights. The European Union ultimately developed its own Charter of Fundamental Rights, in 2000, and this included social rights.

In the 1980s, the Parliament’s very first reports on international human rights set out several demands, including: (1) the development of a stronger legal basis for human rights work in the European Union’s external activities, (2) readiness to leverage the EU’s power on countries violating human rights, (3) stronger administrative capacities for international human rights matters, and (4) better funding for human rights promotion. As regards thematic priorities, the right to life, the right to physical integrity, and the right to a fair trial were emphasized, not least with repression behind the Iron Curtain in mind.

In the 1990s, the Parliament’s demands were actualized. Clauses demanding respect of human rights in external agreements became standard in 1995, and the Parliament supported budget funding for democracy promotion. Political rights were still central, but issues concerning minorities emerged after the Cold War ended, not least in Eastern Europe. The Parliament’s reports acknowledged the challenge of convert countries under transition from authoritarianism to democracy at a time of economic stress. However, there was little consideration of economic and social rights in this connection. The context in this era was democratization. At the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, all countries agreed that human rights were indivisible, inalienable, and interdependent, agreeing on initial efforts to actualize their visions of democratization.

In the 2000s, there were several developments, the first being on the institutional front. The Parliament won the right of assent to certain external agreements, giving it the power to withhold approval of a treaty if the partner country was engaged in human rights abuses. However, the Parliament followed a pragmatic line: it sometimes delayed approval, but never for long. A case in point was the delayed approval of certain provisions with Israel in 2008, in the wake of Operation Cast Lead. Another important development stems from the revelation of the use of torture by the United States in its invasion of Iraq. A key ally was breaching a fundamental human rights norm. In response, the Parliament took the unusual step of creating a Special Committee, to examine the question of renditions. The decade also saw the use of parliamentary diplomacy to promote human rights advances in Latin America and Africa.

The 2010s introduced several developments. One was greater political fragmentation, with the mainstream center-right and center-left groups losing traction. Economic and social rights came to the fore after the financial crisis of 2008 revealed problems of corruption, elite power, and tax avoidance. The environment, moreover, came to the forefront as a human rights issue; the right to a healthy environment implied rights for indigenous people and a challenge to the power of international corporations. Refugee rights also became prominent. There had been concern for refugees already in the 1980s; by the 2010s, policy recommendations became more nuanced, due to the greater numbers involved and to different countries of origin. Lastly, the Parliament made greater use of Special Committees, for example on media manipulation and on new technology. All in all, this decade featured a combination of all three concepts of human rights: the separations among them were no longer clear. Although the 2020s is a young decade, it has already thrown up major human rights challenges: the pandemic and its social and economic impacts, further political polarisation, and the Russian attempt to conquer Ukraine.

Ultimately, the European Parliament has had a strong impact on institutional reform within the EU, and has played its part in democratization, especially in countries on the path towards EU membership. Limitations include the lack of enforcement mechanisms for human rights provisions in EU agreements. Another limitation has been the prioritization of political and civil rights over economic and social rights: while the European Parliament is aimed at fulfilling liberal internationalism, Noonan stresses that there has been greater progress towards the goal of liberté, but much less towards egalité. This should prompt reflection on future priorities.

Ryan Nazari, ESC Research Assistant