Memorandum by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
MEP
A. SUMMARY
1. I support the Charter of Fundamental
Rights as a restatement of the core values of the European Union
since its inception.
2. To date, these values have been expressed
in the acqui communautaire (chapter on home affairs), which
incorporates key United Nations conventions as the foundation
stone of the European Union value system, such as the Declaration
of Human Rights, the International Labour Organisation Convention
and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
In addition the European value system is decoded in the European
Convention for Human Rights and a subsequent judgement by the
European Court of Human Rights on that Convention.
3. The importance of the presence of the
UNCRC in the acqui communautaire is exemplified by the
1998 statement of the Council of Ministers that Member States'
failure to implement the UNCRC would place them in breach of the
Treaty of Rome.
4. The Charter of Fundamental Rights should
in my view be strengthened immediately by suitable protocols to
bring the relevant UN Conventions inside the Charter which would,
inter alia, bring it in line with the acqui communautaire.
This would avoid the risk of a mistaken assumption of priority
for the Charter over the European Charter of Human Rights (ECHR)
or the acqui communautaire.
B. FURTHER REASONING
1. The European Union Charter of Fundamental
Rights does refer briefly to the rights of children but it fails
to acknowledge the substantial United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
2. There are articles in the Charter which
do refer specifically to children, most notably Article 24 which
is the children's rights article. This is very brief but incorporates
some of the more important central principles in the treatment
of children, such as a commitment to their welfare as a primary
consideration, their right to be heard and their right not to
be separated from their parents without good cause.
3. Other articles in the charter are relevant
to children. Article 14 (3) refers to parental rights in the context
of education, Article 21 prohibits discrimination on account of,
inter alia, age and this might be thought to prohibit discrimination
against children for that reason (it should however be said that
any argument that children should be treated identically to adults
would be certain to fail). Then there is Article 32 prohibiting
child labour and providing for the protection of children at work
and Article 33 which deals with employment protections following
the birth of a child.
4. The UNCRC is far wider in terms of its
protections and the rights it asserts for children than the articles
in the ECHR mentioned above.
5. In the United Kingdom the courts do,
at times, make reference to the UNCRC and occasionally it has
a significant influence on the outcome of cases, however, usually
it does not. This is because when a treaty is not incorporated
into domestic law it is nowhere near as effective as when it is.
The ECHR in contrast is now part of English law and the decisions
of the courts, public bodies and so on have to be compatible with
it.
6. The EU Reform Treaty ought to incorporate
reference to the UNCRC, or it might miss the occasion to strengthen
children's rights in the European Union and run the risk of undermining
the high standards of the UNCRC.
7. All Member States of the European Union
as well as the vast majority of nations throughout the world have
signed up to the UNCRC. Therefore it should be natural for the
Charter of Fundamental Rights to incorporate the UNCRC.
14 December 2007
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