Brussels, 27/09/2000 (Agence Europe) - With the adoption of its own-initiative opinion on the theme "Towards an EU Charter of Fundamental Rights" by a very strong majority (112 for, 19 against and 9 abstentions), the European Economic and Social Committee trusts that the Charter will be integrated into the Treaties, not immediately but in the medium term to ensure the integration not only of the immediately applicable rights and the programmable rights (such as the right to housing) but also that requested by the Cologne Summit in June 1999, namely that the Charter should not entail a change in Community powers. During the debates, a small minority of the Employers Group had voted against the initiative because it had the impression that it advocated change in Community powers. This is not so, said Alan Hick ("employment" section of the Committee), adding that the important thing is to have a majority in each group represented at the Committee - employers, workers, varied interests - who fully support this opinion.
The Committee stresses that "in a modern charter of fundamental rights it would be inconceivable to omit social, economic and cultural rights". Another important point for the Committee is that every citizen must be able to invoke the terms of the Charter. "People's expectations will be disappointed if they are given a Charter of Fundamental Rights that cannot be enforced and which they would therefore have to see as pure rhetoric", it states. As stressed in her presentation in plenary, Austrian Rapporteur Anne-Marie Sigmund (Chair of the Various Interests group) says the Charter belongs to the citizens and therefore a Charter of Fundamental Rights that cannot be invoked by citizens is not worth the trouble. In order to fully belong to the citizens, it is important to establish a process for participation by the organised civil society in the interest of developing a European democratic model, she continued.
The Committee hopes its opinion will be a "strong signal to political decision-makers". The civil society organised as represented within the Committee supports the idea of a Charter that must be integrated in the Treaty and which must entail a process for application of rights through a "monitoring system" (a binding procedural provision in the form of follow-up), which would make it possible to establish something dynamic and alive that would really bring the citizens of Europe closer to each other.
We recall that the Convention had invited the Committee, in February, as well as the Committee of the Regions (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.4), to give its opinion on the elaboration of a Charter of Fundamental Rights and its integration into the Treaties. Hoping to give its position later on in the process, the Committee expressed its views in its own-initiative on the basic principles of the Charter, the legal aspects and further action to be made so that this Charter does not remain without any follow-up. This Committee text comes along the lines of the opinion put forward by François Staedelin on "fundamental social rights" (adopted some twelve years ago) and that, more recently, of Ms Rangoni-Machiavelli on "Citizens' Europe".