André
Brie, MEP, Editorial for “Disput – the Left Party.PDS Member
Magazine“, June-December 2005
At
the crossroads
“Human
dignity should not be violated.” There is probably no one, who would
not want to underscore this first – and central – provision of the
German Basic Law. It includes physical inviolability just as the
guarantee of civil, political, and economic basic rights. The reality in
the
Federal
Republic
of the year 2005 looks different, however. “We are witnessing a
dominance of security and economic policy interests that also pushes
elementary perspectives of protection of fundamental rights into the
background”, the Director of the German Institute for Human Rights,
Heiner Bielefeldt, declared a couple of months ago during the
presentation of this year’s “Basic Rights” Report.
The
most recent and at this point the most dramatic expression of this
development (I do not even wish to think further into this direction)
are the Hartz IV laws. How can there be question of human dignity if you
have to live on 345€, or –
as
originally envisaged for the East – on 331€ a month Unemployment
Money? How dignified is it to suffer the comprehensive and ever
recurring snooping of the state into the own life conditions, and to
have to ask partner (man or woman) and children to pay for one’s own
living expenses? To have to fear for pure “material survival” and to
be excluded, at the same time, from social life, culture, and social
contacts – that is nothing else but discrimination! And is not
everyone humiliated who in the Labour Agency has to provide detailed
information even on his or her most intimate life conditions?
Politics
is conducting a general attack at the economic and social fundamental
rights. While the social state formerly put some reins on capitalism,
the movie is now running backwards: unleashing of the market forces and
this with the support by state social policy. Instead of the necessary
modernisation of the social net, there threatens the relapse into the laissez
faire capitalism of the 19th century. It was in the first
line the demolition of the social systems, introduced by Merkel’s
pre-predecessor Kohl, and completed under the ex-Red-Green government
that brought unending electoral defeats to the social democrats.
The
attack at the social state, however, is not only being conducted in
Germany
, but all over
Europe
. Under order of the governments,
Brussels
not only functions as the adjunct, but points out the thrust. A look
into the EU Constitutional Treaty draft – intended to be warmed over
under the Austrian, and even more so the German Council presidency -
confirms that. The notion of “social market economy” is replaced in
the concrete, legally binding part of the Treaty by the principle of an
“open market economy with free competition”. The stipulations on
currency policy, which determine the framework of any economic and
social policy in a major way, are inadequate. While for instance, in the
German Stability Law of 1967, next to monetary stability and equilibrium
of the balance of payment, also economic growth and full employment are
stipulated as objectives of currency policy, it says – and precisely
not only in a law, but with constitutional rank – at the European
level: “The primary objective of the European System of Central Banks
shall be to maintain price stability.” The Charta of Fundamental
Rights was also “tuned down”. In numerous additional protocols, the
governments of the EU states have clearly weakened the legal binding
effect of the basic social rights. For good reasons, this happened under
exclusion of the public; even the left media did not inform on this fact
grave in its consequences. I am sure that the women and men citizens in
France
and in the
Netherlands
did not reject the EU Constitution, because they are against
Europe
. However, they are against a Europe, where social rights are ignored,
where the existential problems of the people are perceived neither by
Brussels
, nor by the governments in the EU.
The
fact that the gap between Poor and Rich both between the countries as
well as within the states becomes ever greater, makes the ideal of a
world, where all people would be free and born equal in dignity and
rights wane into a far distance”, it says in the annual report 2005 by
the human rights organisation amnesty international that was published
only a few days after the German Fundamental Rights report.
Not
only have the economic and social rights, however, moved into the remote
distance. Indissolubly linked to them are the political and democratic
citizenship rights. Poverty, marginalisation, and exclusion are often
linked to discrimination, repression, to the deprivation of basic rights
and the lack of possibilities to realise them. One example of that are
the Roma. Amnesty determined that this population group is “extremely
disadvantaged in almost all areas of life”. Even in EU Europe. Thus
the European Office for the Observation of Racism and Xenophobia already
noted last year that the Roma, especially in the new EU countries, are
the most exposed to racism, xenophobia, and discrimination in education.
It is good that the EU Commission now finally wants to act in this
question. Thus, for instance, European funds are supposed to be used to
improve the Roma’s access to education and lawyers be trained in the
protection of minority rights. The responsible commissar reported this
these days in response to my parliamentary question.
A
clear position by
Brussels
on how the kidnapping practice in
Europe
should be ended – I wrote on that first in my April column – is
still missing until this day, however. The procedure of kidnapping
“terror suspects” and of interrogating them in torture states is
also castigated in the most recent ai report. Just as the deprivation of
prisoners of their rights and the inhuman prison conditions at the US
basis of Guantanamo, the killing of innocents by the occupation troops
in Iraq, or the abuses in the Baghdad prison of Abu Ghraib, for which no
responsible in the Pentagon or in the White House has yet been made
accountable. “The international community stands at the crossroads. It
will have to decide, whether it means it seriously with the promotion
and realisation of human rights”, Barabara Lochbihler, the ai general
secretary for Germany, emphasised. She is right.
Translated
by Carla Krüger, December 26, 2005
