Brussels, 05/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 5 April, negotiators of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe and the European Union finalised the draft agreement with a view to the European Union's accession to the European Commission on Human Rights (ECHR).
Accession, however, is not imminent. The European Union's Court of Justice must now give its stance. The text would then require the unanimous approval of the EU member states, the support of the European Parliament (with a two-thirds majority), and would then need to be ratified by parliaments in the Council of Europe's 47 member states.
The 27 EU member states have already signed up to the convention. Nonetheless, the laws and actions taken by the EU as a bloc or by EU officials are currently not subject to the scrutiny entailed by acceptance of the convention. The draft agreement aims to change all that. The EU's accession to the ECHR will reinforce human rights protection in Europe by submitting, as a last resort, the EU and its legal acts to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.
The secretary general of the Council of Europe, Thorbjorn Jagland, welcomed the agreement sealed by the negotiators, saying: “This is a decisive step, paving the way to EU accession to the European Convention of Human Rights. It will contribute to the creation of a single European legal space, putting in place the missing link in the European system of fundamental rights protection”. Official talks on the subject had been launched on 7 July 2010. They were delayed due to objections essentially raised by the United Kingdom and France, on the European side, but also within other members of the Council of Europe, including Switzerland and Russia. Accession, which has been envisaged since the late 1970s, has become a legal obligation pursuant to the Lisbon Treaty, which took effect on 1 December 2009. (LC/transl.jl)