The European Union’s human rights policy: is the EU’s use of the human rights clause inconsistent?

ABSTRACT

Recurrent claims of selective and inconsistent implementation of the European Union’s (EU) human rights clause questions the legitimacy basis of the Union’s human rights policy. If the EU’s actions do not match its rhetoric, it runs the risk of being accused of hypocrisy. This article contributes with novel empirical insights regarding the question of whether the EU delivers on its human rights policy. When assessing the EU’s use of the human rights clause scholarly literature has largely followed rationalist theory arguing that the EU’s foreign policy decisions are driven by economic interest or security considerations. I find that existing studies have used a biased selection of cases. A combination of theoretical assumptions and methodological choices appears to be guiding the selection process. Existing hypotheses are not sought falsified, as they are tested only on a set of cases where ‘interest’ of some sort is already known to exist. I find non-implementation of the clause also in countries where the EU has no such specific ‘interests’. Given these additional cases the account of the EU’s policy must be reconsidered.

KEYWORDS:

• Human rights
• conditionality
• sanctions
• legitimacy
• EU–ACP relations
• EU foreign policy

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors of this special section and Global Affairs' referee for valuable comments and suggestions on this article. Many thanks also to Helene Sjursen for excellent advice and comments on several earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Johanne Døhlie Saltnes is a researcher at ARENA – Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo. Her research interests include EU Foreign Policy, EU–Africa relations, human rights conditionality, development aid and sanctions.

ORCID

Johanne Døhlie Saltnes http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9896-7516

Notes

1. So far only Article 96 of the Cotonou agreement between the EU and Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group of states, has been implemented.

2. With the notable exception of Del Biondo (2011) who also investigates Rwanda. See below.

3. See also Del Biondo and Orbie (2014).

4. http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html.

5. https://www.hiik.de/en/konfliktbarometer/.

6. Accessed via ACE: http://aceproject.org/ero-en/index_html?filter&topic=&country=&type=Reports%20and%20Assessments.

7. In the assessment of the reports, elections were considered flawed if a report stated serious doubts about the result of the elections and/or that it had fallen short of key international standards.

8. The result of the 2014 legislative elections in Cook Islands were challenged due to high levels of corruption and electoral irregularities. This event was not counted as a non-case since the high court of Cook Island began hearings on the election process shortly after elections were held. The situation was resolved within the Cook Islands national institutions (see Keesing’s pp. 53476 and 53575).

Additional information

Funding

This article is part of the LEGOF project at ARENA, a research project financed by the Research Council of Norway – grant agreement no 288707.