The European Parliament's plenary session on Tuesday 24 November addressed the issue of fundamental rights in the EU in a particularly electric atmosphere. A draft report by Clare Daly (GUE/NGL, Ireland) on the state of play in this area in 2018 and 2019 will be put to the vote on Wednesday 25 November. It might encounter some resistance.
MEPs condemn, among other things, the questioning of women's rights, especially sexual and reproductive rights, and the practices of certain States that undermine the protection of the fundamental rights of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants “on land and at sea”.
The increase in violence and threats against journalists, restrictions on access to funding for civil society organisations and acts of intimidation against them are also strongly condemned.
Ms Daly also denounced a lack of consideration of fundamental rights in the economic and political priorities of the EU and the Member States.
Accusation of censorship
The draft report, she said, had been the subject of 600 “complicated and contradictory” amendments. The coordinators of the political groups were indeed particularly divided.
In addition to the opposition to the text expressed by the ID and ECR groups - the latter considering the report to be a “left-wing manifesto”, - several voices have been raised against the report, going as far as to denounce a “censorship”.
Ms Daly herself assured that she would not hesitate to vote against her report, regretting that the political groups had not been able to agree to “call out abuses and name countries”.
Referring in particular to Catalonia, she denounced the “absurdity” of a report on fundamental rights “in which we are not allowed to mention a country, not even in a footnote”.
Greens/EFA coordinator Diana Riba i Giner, a member of the Republican Left of Catalonia, also said that while her group could live with the text, it remained concerned.
“The major groups continue to block the mention of certain Member States in this report”, she in turn denounced, referring to the deletion, “overnight”, of the explanatory note in which police violence in Catalonia was mentioned.
“When we are negotiating an important report such as this one, it is of most importance that we weight every word, we double-check all the facts and that we don’t choose what to include because of political interest”, Evin Incir (S&D, Sweden) told Ms Daly.
Karlo Ressler (EPP, Croatia), for his part, felt that making fundamental rights a divisive issue risked “undermining the importance of human rights protection systems”.
Consult the draft report: https://bit.ly/33g3oOH (Original version in French by Agathe Cherki)