Can the Charter protect us?
Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I’ve been taking another look at the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights (opens as pdf). As I wrote in OK, when I first looked at it it seemed great and I asked why we should not sign it. In particular, according to Spyblog these principles seemed designed to protect us from a database state:
Article 6
Right to liberty and security
Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person.
Article 7
Respect for private and family life
Everyone has the right to respect for his or her private and family life, home and communications.
Article 8
Protection of personal data
1. Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her.
2. Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the
person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.
3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority.
I have just been talking to a friend more expert than I - though not a professional ‘expert’ in these matters. He warned me against my enthusiasm. These clauses of the Charter could be used to prevent investigative journalism. A wealthy crook, hearing that someone is researching his affairs could demand to see the file on him and could then identify the sources.
Worse, there seems to be no fundamental right to free expression. Article ten says
Freedom of thought, conscience and religion
1. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom
to change religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.
Filed under: Charter of Fundamental Rights, Database State, EU, Liberties
Surely this Article 7 in the EU Charter is like the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Article 8, in that it applies to the actions of state or public bodies against private citizens, bur does nothing to protect privacy from snooping by private citizens or by private sector companies on each other ? In that sense it is no better or worse than the ECHR version, which does not prohibit , say, intrusive paparazzi photographers etc.
Interestingly, what Article78 in the EU Charter does not import from the ECHR Article 8 version
Does that mean that the State / “public authoritiy” is no longer prohibited from interfering with this right of privacy ?
Or does it mean that the catch all exemptions which, particularly the Uk Government uses to drive a coach and horses through say the Human Rights Act o the Data Protection Act, no longer apply ?
The EU Charter Article 10 does not mention “free expression”, but what about :
I’d warn even more severely against enthusiasm than your friend. And depart from wtwu of SpyBlog’s view.
Mark’s wrong above. The interests and powers of the Union are implicitly superordinate. Read Chapter VII first. All the articles of the Charter are explicitly subordinate to Chapter VII, which imports all the caveats in the ECHR, including the most deadly for liberty:
i.e. Free-speech, privacy and the rest are not protected if you are critical of the apparat. This was a minor problem with ECHR, with the bulk of matter included in the EU Charter it starts to be a big problem.
Article 8 is actually dangerous. It reproduces the basic provisions of data protection law, which have in practice proved too feeble by far, but entrenches a regulatory model, viz -
That tends to exclude directly enforceable individual rights, and any role for the courts.
The Charter is, as one might expect in a charter produced by bureaucrats, a bureaucrat’s charter.
The complexity and opacity of the language used certainly support that opinion !
As with all of these things, the devil is in the detail of exactly how it is incorporated into UK Law.
Remember how , for example, the ECHR Article 13
was deliberately left out of the UK Human Rights Act ?
On another point, can anyone see how the Labour government’s favourite Anti-Social Behavior Orders, Control Orders, Serious Crime Prevention Orders. Asset Freezing Orders etc. can be compatible with the Fundamental Charter Auricle 49 ?
All of these can be applied to people who have never been charged let alone convicted of any criminal offence, on the basis of a civil procedure and the civil burden of proof, but they are enforced with a serious criminal prison terms and / or a fine, if the completely arbitrary conditions of the Order are broken.
Surely the arnitrary terms and conditions of such civil Orders are not themselves Criminal offences and so the wording
applies ?