Brussels, 27/09/2004 (Agence Europe) - Amnesty International has criticised the EU's track record in justice and home affairs, and has voiced its concern at its tone of caution for the future. “There are enough elements to justify concern”, said Dick Oosting, the director of the European office of the human rights organisation on Monday, speaking to a few journalists. “The fight against illegal immigration and terrorism have hijacked the EU's justice and home affairs agenda”, said Mr Oosting.
With the Member States due to launch the second phase of the so-called European policy of freedom, security and justice, which was launched in 1999, at the European Council of 5 November, Amnesty International calls upon the European Union to “re-establish the balance by genuinely stressing human rights”. Dick Oosting feels that the European Union is not doing enough to put its human rights commitments into practice, either towards third countries or within the Member States, the latter aspect being “traditionally considered as being beyond the European Union's scope”.
The organisation hopes that plans to transform the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia into a European Human Rights Agency will put this priority back on the agenda. It expects the European Commission to present the proposal to set up this agency in October. Amnesty criticises the fact that discussions on a framework-decision defining and sanctioning racism and xenophobia have been suspended for over a year: no presidency wants to put it back on the agenda, even thought they have all cited the fight against racism and xenophobia among their priorities, says Amnesty's Susie Alegre. The organisation also wants the Council of the EU to create a working group to verify that human rights are respected by all European policies.
Amnesty International is particularly concerned by the “tonality” of discussions on setting up refugee camps outside the EU, which were relaunched by the German Minister of the Interior, Otto Schily, and the Commissioner designate for Justice and Home Affairs, Rocco Buttiglione. The organisation is concerned about the observation of human rights, referring in particular to Italy's plans to create such camps in Libya, where such camps already exist. Without being hostile to the idea of allowing asylum seekers to submit their application outside the EU, Amnesty stresses that this should be an additional possibility, and one which would not take away their rights to do so if they were already within the EU. Furthermore, it calls upon the Member States to change their minds about all the very minimal common standards adopted in recent years in the field of asylum, in order to reinforce refugees' rights.