Home > UN/CHINA: THE INEVITABLE « NO-ACTION » OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, OR THE CFSP AS THE MAINSPRING OF THE SLOW ANTI-DEMOCRATIC DRIFT OF THE EU
UN/CHINA: THE INEVITABLE « NO-ACTION » OF THE EUROPEAN UNION, OR THE CFSP AS THE MAINSPRING OF THE SLOW ANTI-DEMOCRATIC DRIFT OF THE EU
Brussels-Geneva, 19 April 2001. Not surprisingly, the “no-action motion” presented yesterday in Geneva by the PRC to avoid the debate and vote on the resolution censuring the Human Rights record in China, presented by the United States, was adopted by the UN Human Rights Commission by 23 votes for, 17 against, and 12 abstentions.
Statement by Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party and member of the European Parliament:
"One thing is certain: yesterday’s vote by the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations can have surprised no-one but hypocrites. For the European Union, and the Council in particular, has done all it can to treat the dictator Jiang Zemin with special consideration. In actual fact it was not a difficult task. It was enough to do nothing.
To start with, by not co-sponsoring the resolution presented by the United States. A resolution that was anything but war-like. A resolution which generously acknowledged the “progress” made by the Chinese authorities. In which the harshest words of reproach did not go further than “concern”. Without the slightest mention of the word “condemnation”.
For those people – are there any left in the Council? – who have retained some capacity for indignation, the attitude of the EU was literally scandalous. To the point that we have every right to wonder, with Wei Jingsheng, whether the decision-making process in the Union is actually democratic. It is no secret, in fact, that only four of the fifteen member countries were firmly in favour of the position of the dictator Jiang Zemin, and thus opposed to any initiative that could have led to a condemnation of the People’s Republic of China. A group of four led by the France of President Chirac, the herald of the repeated mock sale of Airbuses to the PRC (who can say how many Airbuses have REALLY been sold to the PRC in the last ten years?) and unfailingly supported by Prime Minister Aznar’s Spain and unpresentable Dini, the italian Foreign Affairs minister.
It is up to those who continue to praise the progress of the Common Foreign and Security Policy to reply: what was the EU’s policy in Geneva? What is the EU’s policy towards China? That of critical “dialogue” advocated by President Chirac, which has led nowhere, or that of the majority of the member States, of the European Parliament, of Chinese dissidents, and of Tibetans, who can only take note of the increase in the widespread violation of the fundamental rights in China, and of the persistent refusal of the Chinese leaders to establish the rule of law and democracy?
In the face of this example of common foreign policy, no-one can be surprised that some people have begun to call for a return to the “good old” national foreign policies.
