towards a better Europe   Return to the archives list Why human rights and freedom are bottom of the agenda An unfortunate reality is that human rights and basic freedoms are issues which come at the bottom of political agendas. Our current democratic structures are the result of centuries of evolution. Besides containing a mechanism for electing governments, democracies, world wide, operate on a day to day basis responding more and more to the pressures of organized lobbies than to individual and community concerns. The attempt to place human rights and freedoms squarely into the political agenda is something which has occurred more obviously during the last 50 years. Broadly speaking this can only succeed if there is a rethink of the basic principles of democracy and a restructuring of democractic operations around the imperative of a fundamental protection and enhancement of freedoms and human rights. Trying to tag these concerns onto existing legal arrangements when the political lobby landscape is dominated by groups whose principal concerns do not include freedom or human rights, is doomed to failure. It is therefore a matter of true concern that the European Commission, a major lobby in itself, decided to review what is needed in Europe to reduce the democratic deficit by discussing the matter with the major group representatives and lobbies. This exercise of institutions talking to institutions could never have been expected to provide a blueprint to reduce the democratic deficit but would only strengthen the role of those same institutions around a more 'efficient' and 'transparent' process to close the democratic deficit. Who should initiate legislation? The limitation of the Commission's efforts has been the failure to question the European Commission's own role as the initiator of European legislation and manager of the process which draws up regulations. In the opinion of many, this situation alone, the initiation of legislation by an un-elected group of civil servants, is where the seed of the democratic deficit lies. There is good sense in this argument. Most European legislation follows a slow route where different 'interest groups' have their say and governments bring such laws and regulations into national laws by statute. The track record shows that an increasing amount of the law in Member States of the Union is not initiated by citizens nor even their governments. The law, regulations and punishments, for non observation, are implemented as law with very little consultation of the people. For example, people cannot even exercise a broad control by voting because these laws and regulations seldom feature in national political party manifestos. Far from the madding crowd The most threatening aspect of this process, of a budding corporate statism on the one hand and an the increasing arbitrariness of legal decision making, is that legal remedies to the non-observation of the law or a regulation are enforced without recourse to the courts. Quite often 'punishments' are administered and enforced by 'authorized officials'. Statutes have become, more and more, a codified book of rules, a blind legal machine. A basic understanding and defense of individual human rights and freedoms rests largely in the community conscience. Such a conscience can be brought to bear upon legal proceedings in the form of a jury. But, unfortunately, most statutory arrangements provide no role of juries in judging the applicability of the law to any specific case; the citizen is without defense or effective appeal. No role for the community A case in point is the adaptation of the European Convention for Human Rights by each European member state. Most have 'adjusted' to the Convention by simply stating that any statutory decisions taken cannot be regarded as a human rights violation. Most statutory laws involved were never conceived with human rights and freedoms in mind but were more geared to administrative efficiency, little leeway for interpretation, and enforcement through various punishments. The emphasis upon efficiency of application of statutory laws is often related to economic interests of some parties as well as a sometimes inappropriate stress by local and national governments to reduce the costs of implementation. Thus the following of due process by officials is sufficient to side-step any obligations or responsibility for human rights violations. This 'administrative' approach to legal enforcement has resulted in many people being harmed by an official decision and also finding no effective support from appeals to the European Court of Human Rights. This failure of the system relates to the failure of the European Court to operate a jury system. Decisions are arrived at by majority vote by a panel of judges, most of whom come from countries with disgraceful human rights records, and which see no role for the community in decisions as exercised through juries. The voting by judges in the Court is quite often of a 'political' nature. Accordingly, the failure of the European Commission to question its role as initiator and developer of European laws, policy and regulations, and its continued use of 'representative groups' in progressing with its proposals, will default to business as usual. No matter what is stated and what intentions are expressed, in practice, individual human rights and freedoms will continue to remain, in practical terms, at the bottom of the agenda. Rights and freedoms as the measure of civilization There is no doubt that there needs to be an attempt to raise individual human rights and freedoms to the status of the measure by which we judge legislation, policy and regulations; indeed civilization itself. To ensure a fair application of any legislation and regulations, the citizens of Europe need to be able to bring their local community consciences, in the form of juries, to bear on the proceedings. This can help take account for the specific circumstances and conditions of each case of appeal. The existance of juries causes legislators to be more careful since juries can deem laws non-applicable to any specific case. This helps encourage the forumlation of better and juster laws. So the jury system can help uphold greater fairness in both the short and in the long term. To benefit from the lessons learned from jury intervention, the citizens of Europe need to be more directly involved in the initiation of legislation, policy and regulations as well as in the vetting of the final forms of proposals. And then, by insisting on the exercise of jury oversight and control over the application of such laws and regulations., citizens can help ensure a juster application of the law under each circumstance.