In his 2016 activity report, presented to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Wednesday 26 April), the Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muiznieks, described last year as the crest of the wave which could lead to better, but also to worse, in other words the beginning of the end of the European system of human rights and European integration.
Since 2015 (with France and Ukraine) and 2016 (with Turkey), we are in an unprecedented situation, as there are now three member states of the Council of Europe (CoE) in breach of the European Human Rights Convention, having decreed a state of emergency, he said.
As regards Turkey, he also flagged up the swift worsening of the human rights situation in the country, referring to the two study visits he has made to the country and his three memoranda on it (on the state of emergency, anti-terrorist measures and the freedom of expression and state of the media respectively).
Migration issues were the backdrop for all of 2016, he added, deploring initiatives that undermine asylum law. National, but also European, initiatives, as the EU-Turkey agreement on migration is, he feels, highly problematic.
Brexit itself is a worry to the Human Rights Commissioner, as it presents several aspects related to human rights and has been accompanied by a toxic debate on migration, followed by an increase in acts of violence inspired by hate, to say nothing of the risk of destabilising Northern Ireland.
Poland, where political measures constitute a systemic attack on the rule of law, is of even greater concern to Muiznieks as the country has refused to cooperate with the Venice Commission of the CoE on constitutional law issues. If this attitude becomes more widespread, it could speed up the decline of the European human rights system, he warned, going on to highlight the pernicious practices of calls for a modernisation of the European Human Rights Convention, on which the case-law of the Court of the same name is based. A revision could lead to chaos, he warned, calling on the Committee of Ministers of the CoE to take these matters seriously and on the members of PACE to play a much more proactive role with their governments.
The election of Donald Trump to the White House also got a mention in the 2016 report, as it led to an external shock in Europe and the world with a more egocentric definition of national interests. If this approach, which denounces international agreements, gains ground in Europe and the rest of the world, the European post-war human rights protection system, already weakened in 2016, may well collapse, he argued. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)