Mensenrechtenhof waarschuwt Britten voor boycot (en)

Met dank overgenomen van EUobserver (EUOBSERVER) i, gepubliceerd op woensdag 2 maart 2011, 9:28.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - If the UK boycotts the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR i) in Strasbourg it could start a chain reaction with other members that would "undermine" the body, its political chief has warned.

Speaking to EUobserver in an interview in Brussels on Tuesday (1 March), Thorbjorn Jagland, the secretary general of the court's parent institution, the Council of Europe, said: "I think one has to think about the consequences of such an act. It could be the starting point of undermining the whole convention system that we have built up in Europe ... if one country starts to opt out of the convention system and the court, it could be the start of a process that others will follow."

Mr Jagland's remarks come amid a controversy in the UK caused by prisoners' legal appeals to get the right to vote in line with a 2005 ECHR ruling which goes against British law.

Strasbourg believes the UK is unlikely to opt out despite calls by some Conservative Party MPs due to opposition from the British junior coalition partner, the Liberal Democrats.

But they are awaiting with some unease the findings of a British parliamentary commission set up to explore the creation of a British 'Bill of Rights' that could over-ride the European Convention on Human Rights, the basic document of the Strasbourg court.

Asked if he believes the UK backlash is based on specific objections to the 2005 ruling or on broader euroscepticism, he said: "I think it's both. But I am very glad to see what the British government is saying: namely that they want to focus on reform of the ECHR."

"There is a strong need for reform ... the backlog of [cases in] this court is so huge. We need to discuss how we can handle all these applications in due time and how wide the interpretation of the human rights convention should be."

The former Norwegian prime minister and chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee noted that the recent Arab uprisings underline the need for a robust European defence of human rights both in the south and in former Soviet countries.

"We have a lot to learn from what we did in Europe during the Cold War years, when we also engaged with Communist countries but there was a strong emphasis on human rights going back to the Helsinki convention of 1975," he said, referring to a pact between Western and Soviet countries that included a civil liberties charter.

"I think it was very important for the developments in eastern Europe that we had such a strong emphasis on human rights. We didn't do it in the Middle East. Now we have to do it," he added.

Mr Jagland said that promotion of ECHR or UN-defined human rights can lead to revolutions as in Europe in 1989, but he rejected the idea that the West exploits rights in order to interfere in third countries.

Commenting on China's boycott of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to a Chinese dissident, he noted: "What China said during this heated debate was wrong. We are not trying to impose Western values on China. We are talking about rights that China has to uphold in its own country because they are a member of the UN."

Mr Jagland, who was in the EU capital to meet with European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso i, said Mr Barroso seems to have the right balance of idealism and realism in the way he deals with dictators, such as Uzbekistan's Islam Karimov, who got the red-carpet treatment in Brussels last month.

Asked if he would also have welcomed Mr Karimov in Oslo in his time as Norwegian PM, he said: "I think it's important to meet everybody."


Tip. Klik hier om u te abonneren op de RSS-feed van EUobserver