The Chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights (DROI), Mounir Satouri, explained to Agence Europe his priorities for his 2.5-year mandate. At a time when one of the former chair of this sub-committee, Antonio Panzeri, has been implicated in ‘Qatarargate’, Mr Satouri wants to restore the reputation of ‘DROI’ and resacralise human rights. (Interview by Camille-Cerise Gessant)
Agence Europe: You were elected Chair of DROI in July. What are your priorities?
Mounir Satouri: It’s difficult to prioritise. My first objective is to enable the Commission to regain its place and its reputation and to reaffirm its usefulness for European policies.
The second objective is to enable it to play its full role in overseeing the executive. We are first and foremost a body of the European Parliament, of the European legislative power. So I hope that in our work, in our hearings, we will be able to play our monitoring role to the full, and that the Commission in particular will also play its part.
Will monitoring that the other institutions take human rights into account therefore be a more important element than in the previous mandate?
This will take up more of the committee’s agenda. Holding hearings, meeting with partners and NGOs is our job and we will continue to do it. But this should not hide our inability to play our role of control and to ensure that our principles, our regulations, our deliberations and our framework of respect for human rights are respected. We’re not going to indulge in hearings to hide the fact that we can’t ensure that human rights and human rights clauses are verified.
My role is to objectify the discussion around human rights. I don’t want the issue of human rights to be reduced to a political issue in the end, and for there to be the right way for the EPP to look at human rights, the right way for the Socialists to look at human rights, and the way - which I will always consider wrong - for the far right to look at human rights.
If I want our committee to check compliance with the human rights clause (in the EU’s agreements with third countries), it’s not because I’m a human rights campaigner, which I am, but because the Treaties say that the European Union’s external policy must respect human rights. (...)
I would like to see human rights reinstated in this institution as a founding principle of the European Union, as a fundamental value around which the European Union was created. It needs to be depoliticised and resacralised.
This Parliament is more politically right-wing than its predecessor. How can one ensure that the Subcommittee on Human Rights retains its power and is not torn between the different groups, at the risk of no longer being heard?
That’s what’s at stake. I ask to be judged at the end of my mandate. Me, I believe in education and in people’s sincere reflection.
The sub-committee’s first trip under my chairmanship will be to The Hague to meet with the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Obviously, we have different assessments (depending on the political group). But I hope that the meeting with those involved in international justice will enable us - and this will not be the only element - at some point to reach a consensus on the primacy of international law, international humanitarian law and the importance of international justice. It is the common good of humanity that we built in the aftermath of the Second World War and its horrors.
I’m a great believer in dialogue, education and the methods of consensus and collective work that enable us to work together despite our differences.
In July, your sub-committee was unable to elect its third and fourth vice-chairs. Where are you at with that?
We’re nowhere. The committee is set up under our rules. There is a chair and two vice-chairs.
Since July, I have had no requests from the groups to organise the vote. I think that if the groups haven’t asked for it, it’s because it’s not a simple matter either. Neither The Left nor the ECR groups have asked me to organise an election for the third and fourth vice-chairs. But the subject will come up again, with the difficulties it will bring; we’ll deal with it in due course.
What do you expect from the European Commission in terms of human rights?
I’m expecting a lot.
In 2019, the Subcommittee on Human Rights was not involved in the Commissioners’ hearings. As a body, it did not have the opportunity to ask either written or oral questions. We will be involved in the hearings of three Commissioners: the High Representative, the Commissioner for the Mediterranean and the Commissioner for Enlargement. I take this as a positive sign of the space and latitude given to the Committee on Legal Affairs during this mandate.
If I or someone else asks the question on behalf of the DROI committee (during the hearings), it’s not the same as if I ask the question as a simple member of the Greens. And the status of the answer to the question is not the same.
Do you think this also shows that human rights are perhaps more important in the European Parliament in general?
In any case, it shows that this issue will be very sensitive during this mandate, that foreign policy without human rights is not easy, and that legislative work on international relations or enlargement without the DROI Subcommittee is not easy.
What is your definition of an ideal EU human rights policy? And what progress should be made to achieve this ideal policy compared to what we have now?
I don’t know whether the aim is to have an ideal human rights policy. The aim is to have a foreign policy that respects our principles and values in terms of human rights.
I’m not an idealist by nature. What I want is for our relations with third countries to be guided by respect for our own values, without double standards, and for us not to be complicit in supporting authoritarian regimes and human rights abuses.