This last week’s eurocentrique concentrated on a chat I got to have with a European Court of Human Rights Judge, and changes afoot in the Human Rights sphere of the European Union.
A day after European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso had potentially mentioned an intention to create a Human Rights Commissioner, to today where in the European Parliament last presentation of his policies for the next five years he’s ready to be voted in tomorrow morning and he announced the potential of not one this time but three new Commissioners! (Migration, Justice, Security and Human Rights and Climate Change!).
Through this last eurocentrique see what the ECHR Judge’s response to the Commission’s move in this sector was. Enjoy:
Walking down Avenue Tervuren last week on the way to a slightly different press meeting I couldn’t help my building excitement, I tried, I really did, but it really is moments like this that make me glad I’m a journalist!.
Next week I’ll write up and let you have a read of the content of the individual interview I had the chance to take with the main personality at a Council of Europe meeting, but for now it’s just the snippets I’m afraid.
Back in 1996 when I started studying European Law and its fundamental rights aspect and over the next four years when our course delved into the Human Rights aspect of the social evolution of the free Union of all these member states, with the Supranational notion of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and the European Charter on Human Rights, I wouldn’t have imagined meeting a judge of that court down the street from work.
What’s more, the esteemed Judge Francoise Tulkens, the Belgian Member of the 47 judge cabinet, (one for each of the members who have signed and passed into legislation the Convention of Human Rights), was so easy to talk to and descriptive that you derived from her a real sense of the court as she explained the inner workings, the passage of the case law, the details that sometimes aren’t as obvious and how of late the case load has seriously become an issue.
There are many aspects of what she said that I found fascinating. I had heard just the day before that President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso had in one of his question and answer sessions in the European Parliament stated the intention of the creation of a European Commissioner for Human Rights. What would this mean to her I asked her?
Actually it was too soon to comment and both she and the Council of Europe reiterated that any advancement of Human Rights was a more than good sign, but the details remain to be seen, in particular she wanted to ask how this commissioner would relate to the ECHR, the Convention and what would be its precise function. For the time being the Commission confirms the “intention” to “potentially” create such a Commissioner I have been told, but this was a surprise move.
And yet, Judge Tulkens was not unnerved by change, she had joined the Court just as it had changed from a Commission into a Court in 1989 and has seen it grow, “the most important rights we have fought for and achieved being the right to life in the EU, most recently the case law on human rights in prisons I believe are fundamental and surprisingly some case law related to climate change which lies on the right to private life,” the Judge said.
What she touched on of interest was her great pleasure of talks for asylum relocation within the EU as has been announced by the European Commission last week. This she said was absolutely vital as most cases that come to the court “and indeed one I am sitting on now that involves Belgium relate to the one point of entry rule where people come in by Greece (in the majority) find themselves in another European state quite easily but then legally have to be sent back to Greece, there is a case I am presiding on now on this very issue and it really is a big problem in general, the immigration in that section of Europe is more than a burden,” Judge Tulkens said.
Immigration regulation still has a long way to go, many are the skeptics and experts and the plans as well.
Belgium is beginning a process of giving all residents with no papers “sans papiers” a resident status as of September 15, enabling them to be legalized, placed in the system and illegal migrants to be inducted into society.
Is this the answer? Not all member states agree, despite large numbers of an ageing population and the lack of eligible workers.
The Swedish Presidency also promised to tackle immigration, Council meetings could prove enlightening up until the end of the year. Stay tuned.
Follow Alia Papageorgiou on twitter @eurocentrique