A Charter of fundamental rights

As I said in the previous post, the text of the Constitution is more than just a constitution: it is also an international treaty, as well as a Charter of Rights.
Citizens of the EU have guaranteed rights and countries willing to enter the EU will have to respect them. Here's what my favorite summary of the Constitution has to say about that:

The Charter guarantees respect for human dignity; the right to life; the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment; the right to liberty and security; respect for private and family life; freedom of thought, conscience and religion; freedom of expression and information; the right to education; freedom to conduct a business; the right to property; equality before the law; respect for cultural, religious and linguistic diversity; equality between men and women; the integration of persons with disabilities; the right to access to justice and to a fair trial; the presumption of innocence and right of defence; etc.

These rights go beyond those of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights, with new rights to oppose discrimination based on gender or disabled citizens.  Of course, some rights are very European and may sound strange to an American, such as mentions of "sustainable development",  "solidarity between generations", and "protection against discrimination of the grounds of sexual orientation".
But as a Euro citizen, I do agree that preserving the planet (sustainable development), facing Europe's demographic challenge (solidarity between generations), and establishing equality between gays and straights (protection against discrimination of the grounds of sexual orientation) are important topics to me.

Comments

[EU Serf]

These rights are a shopping list of Social Democratic ideas. As such they have no place in a constitution as they are creating the opposite of a level playing field.

To me they strengthen the state and its claim on all of our lives and incomes and decrease the level of real rights that we enjoy vis a vis the state, the body that is a real threat to our liberty.

For example, solidarity between generations means that when the Ponzi schemes that they call public pensions go bankrupt, we will all have to pay half of our salaries to honour the promises of long dead corrupt politicians.

[Tim Worstall]

The Right To Life? So Abortion’s illegal now is it? About the only thing that would get me to vote for that farrago of nonsense. As Serf points out, it encapsulates the Social Democratic Ideal, the Third Way crap.
Constitutions are about what powers we the citizenry give to the Govt and what the Govt may not do to us. Everything else is up for voting on at each and every election....ooops, sorry, forgot, we don’t get to do that for the Commission do we?
Raising an old idea, if we must have an EU constitution, why not simply adopt the American one? Lasted a couple of hundred years, has its problems but they do seem to be able to run most of a continent on it.

[Sebastiano G.]

I do not see why the fundamental statements in the EU constitution (at least in the summary above) should not be agreed upon by anyone wanting to live in a civilized peaceful democratic society.
How are they unfair to conservative ideals ? (at least, as long as the latter ones recognize that we are all part of society and are respectful of everyone's right to life with dignity).
Where is the suffocating grip of the State over our personal liberties and incomes?
Solidarity between generations does not support corruption and generational priviligies (quite the opposite).
And abortion is still legal as long as we vote to allow it(it is not written in the constitution though). In my opinion, it is a regrettable measure but much better to have this freedom than the miserable horrors that women had to face before being granted the right.

[Eoghan]

What one must bear in mind when invoking the US Constitution is that it was never intended to fulfil the same purpose the EU constitution is to serve.

First, the various US colonies were broadly similar [relatively speaking - yes there were differences, but as stark as those separating Poland and the UK? Greece and Ireland? I think not]. The Constitution was designed to provide the *basis* for a government.

In contrast, the EU25 [and growing] are remarkably diverse. Further, we already have the basis of the government/legislative bodies. The EU Constitution is designed to *reflect*, rather than *prescribe* the EU.

The rights laid out in the Constitution and the various associated treaties, going back through the history of the Union, are not designed to be a *starting block*, rather they are a reflection of the level of progress we have already attained. The notion that we would have, say, freedom of expression only because of the EU constitution seems somewhat absurd. Rather, the Constitution specifies freedom of expression *because* we have attained that level of development.

The EU Constitution is much more "look, we have arrived" than "time for a journey".

[enfolfsok]

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