Text 12152, 93 rader
Skriven 2005-04-24 19:38:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: EU liberty
==================
http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2005/0425/097.html


Liberty, European-Style 
Dan Seligman, 04.25.05 

The EU has funny ideas about human rights. For example, the idea that 
free speech is not among those rights. 

Viewed from 3,000 miles away, the European Union looks like a kind of 
parallel United States. On both sides of the Atlantic, living standards 
are high, government is democratic and educated people speak English. 

View it up close and you see striking differences. One of them is that 
America has the First Amendment and Europe doesn't. You can argue 
endlessly about whether the Founding Fathers intended the free speech 
clause--"Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech"--
to protect flag-burning and nude dancing. But news stories from assorted 
Old World democracies make a persuasive case that they badly need a 
First Amendment over there. Not impeded by one, governments engage in a 
degree of speech suppression unimaginable in the U.S. 

A lot of the suppression takes place via national "speech codes" 
somewhat similar to those imposed on numerous American campuses in the 
1990s but repeatedly struck down by First Amendment rulings. Here, for 
example, is a news story (broadcast by the BBC) reporting that Croatia, 
currently a candidate for EU membership, is broadening its laws against 
"hate speech" so that it would be criminal to engage in "spreading 
racism and xenophobia." Here is another story reporting that a respected 
political scientist in Finland--he happens to be the father of the 
country's prime minister--was being investigated by the "central 
criminal investigation department" for an interview he gave to a 
newspaper, in which he expressed the view that Africa's economic 
problems reflected low intelligence, not the heritage of colonialism. 
(He was eventually cleared.) 

Sweden has a law barring "inflammatory" remarks directed at racial or 
religious groups, or homosexuals. A pastor who had delivered an anti-gay 
sermon was sentenced to a 30-day jail term, was then acquitted on appeal 
and is now awaiting the outcome of a further appeal to the country's 
Supreme Court. Sweden also has a "minister for gender equality," who has 
decreed that male-female behavioral differences "are created by 
upbringing, culture, economic conditions, power structures and political 
ideology." The gender equality minister's ruling was recently assailed 
by a columnist for the influential Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet, who 
said the ruling had prevented publication of a book that included an 
interview with a neurobiologist discussing male-female brain 
differences. Many of the speech codes target neo-Nazi sympathizers who 
deny or minimize the Holocaust, and there have been numerous 
prosecutions under these laws in France and Germany. 

It sounds incredible, or possibly not, but among the greatest threats to 
free speech in Europe is a document called the Charter of Fundamental 
Rights. The charter, proclaimed at an EU summit in 2000 and now 
incorporated into the provisional EU Constitution, comprises a blizzard 
of rights: rights for children, for women (they have a right to 
preference in areas wherein they are underrepresented), for asylum-
seekers, for workers and employers (both are said to have a right to 
collective bargaining), for murderers (they have a right not to suffer 
capital punishment) and for the disabled. There is a right to marry, a 
right to privacy, a right to a good education and a lot more--including 
a right to freedom of expression. These rights are enumerated in 53 
articles. But the final article is not a right. Headed "Prohibition of 
abuse of rights," it states: "Nothing in this Charter shall be 
interpreted as implying any right to engage in any activity … aimed at 
the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms recognized in this 
Charter or at their limitation." 

This seems highly problematic. If someone were to mount a campaign 
favoring the death penalty, or opposing collective bargaining, or 
opposing preferences for women, or limiting the options of asylum-
seekers, this would plainly constitute an effort to destroy rights 
recognized in the Charter--an activity characterized as an "abuse of 
rights" and therefore prohibited. The Bruges Group, a think tank in 
London, has published an essay arguing this case. The essay was written 
by Brian Hindley, a British economist, and was endorsed (in a prefatory 
note) by Oliver Letwin, who is now Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 
Tory "shadow cabinet." 

The threat posed by the final article has thus far received little 
publicity, and it seems safe to say that very few Brits are aware of an 
EU threat to freedom of speech on their island. It also appears that 
very few members of the EU bureaucracy are aware of Hindley's argument. 
It was certainly news to the bureaucrat I discussed it with--a European 
Commission spokesman on cultural issues--who immediately pronounced it 
nonsense. 

But who never properly accounted for the plain wording of the Charter, 
or his continent's ragged record on free speech.


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