Proposition 54K2835

Projet de loi portant assentiment au Protocole n° 15 portant amendement à la Convention de sauvegarde des droits de l'homme et des libertés fondamentales, fait à Strasbourg le 24 juin 2013.

General information ¶

Submitted by

MR Swedish coalition

Submission date

Dec. 7, 2017

Official page

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Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

European Court of Human Rights European Convention on Human Rights international agreement human rights

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP Open Vld N-VA MR PP VB

Voted to reject

PVDA | PTB

Abstained from voting

∉

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Discussion ¶

Feb. 8, 2018 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

Mrs Gwenaëlle Grovonius, rapporteur, refers to her written report.

The Protocol No. 15 contains a lot of innovations. As such, the parties can no longer object to referring a case to the Grand Chamber. This is a procedural rule. The deadline for submitting a petition in Strasbourg is reduced from six months to four months. This is also a procedural rule.

However, there are also some problematic aspects. I would like to highlight it on behalf of my group 2.

First, it is a mixed treaty, which the Council of State also emphasizes in its opinion. The convention must therefore also be approved by the Communities and the Regions, simply because not only the federal state but also the provinces are obliged to concrete respect for human rights in the exercise of their powers.

However, I note that the Working Group on Mixed Conventions, which is chaired by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and which also includes representatives of the provinces, finds, despite the very clear opinion of the State Council, that this is not a mixed treaty.

Therefore, we are not only living in times of community standstill, we are apparently living in times in which the states voluntarily give up some of their powers. It comes down to the fact that a power is wrongly hereditarized, in short, is usurped by the federal government.

Secondly, the Protocol No. 15 as regards the legal protection of the path of Protocol No. 14, which dates from 2010, continues. In 2010, it was made more difficult to initiate proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights by the introduction of a new ground of inadmissibility, namely, in case one has not suffered a substantial disadvantage. That, by the way, immediately raised the question what was that, substantial disadvantage suffering?

In any case, even if no substantial disadvantage had been suffered, the petition remained admissible if the case had not been properly handled by the national court.

I was opposed to the Protocol No. 14, but to my surprise, the Protocol No. 15 further, and now removes the last sentence, which states that a petition, even if there is no disadvantage, is still admissible if the case has not been properly dealt with at national level. Therefore, a case no longer needs to be properly addressed at the national level, while it is a matter of fundamental rights, in particular human rights.

Furthermore, I have never understood and will probably never understand the connection between suffering harm and a disregard for human rights. These are two different things. Any of the human rights enshrined in the Convention may be disregarded without any harm or harm. In such cases, the European Court of Human Rights has always held in its judgment that the mere establishment of the violation of the Convention is sufficient as compensation, as compensation. So now, apparently, we are moving away from that. Access to the European Court of Human Rights is becoming more difficult, and I regret that.

Member States are very bored with the European Court of Justice. Since 1959, the European Court of Justice has issued more than 19,500 judgments. In 84 % of cases, the Court has found a violation of one of the fundamental rights or freedoms. I therefore understand that for some Member States the European Court of Justice is a lice in the fur. Those Member States want to make the conditions of admissibility so strict that there are fewer and fewer proceedings before the Court, which I can only regret.

My group will not approve the Consent Act for those reasons.

The issue of human rights requires great caution in the face of adaptations such as those contained in this Protocol No. 15.

We regret various aspects of the said Protocol and we are not the only ones. Thus, various non-governmental organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, European Human Rights Advocacy Center, etc., have criticized several aspects of this Protocol No. 15 in a joint statement on 24 June 2013.

We share three of the criticisms made by this coalition of NGOs. The first criticism relates to the fact that the Protocol provides for a reduction in the time limit for appeal to the European Court of Human Rights from six to four months. It is, in fact, a limitation in terms of access to justice, since the six-month period is often necessary, in particular for vulnerable groups. The second criticism concerns the amendment on admissibility that aims to reduce the scope of application. When a national court has not sufficiently taken into account an application, it is no longer automatically considered a significant disadvantage. This limits the competence of the European Court of Human Rights. The third criticism concerned the expansion of the discretion that, previously, was not applied to all provisions of the Convention. This is problematic insofar as this margin implies a logic according to which national interests are placed before human rights.

These are the three reasons why we are not able to support this Protocol.