EU faces ‘tricky’ talks with Council of Europe

Head of human rights watchdog foresees difficulties in establishing a legal relationship between the EU and the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Council of Europe’s new secretary-general, Thorbjørn Jagland, today said that he expects complicated negotiations with the EU in its bid to become a member of the European Convention on Human Rights.

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All 27 EU member states are members of the Council of Europe, and members of and signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, which was created by the Council of Europe. However, the EU as a body is not a member of the convention, a state of affairs that the Lisbon treaty says should change.

In signing the treaty, EU member states agreed to create a legal entity for the EU, so that it could formally deal with other regional or international organisations.

Jagland told reporters during a visit to Brussels that he expects the EU’s member states to agree on a negotiating mandate in June and to start talks with the Council of Europe shortly after, possibly in July.

The EU’s negotiating mandate will be drafted by the European Commission, and Jagland was in Brussels to hold talks with two of the Commission’s members – Viviane Reding, whose portfolio is justice, and Cecilia Malmström, who is the commissioner in charge of home affairs.

The former Norwegian premier, who took up his post in Strasbourg earlier this year, said the membership talks would involve “difficult problems”, including how the EU should pick a judge to work at the European Court of Human Rights, a court established under the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights.

“The judges of the member countries of the Council of Europe are elected by the [Council’s] Parliamentary Assembly”, in which there is no official EU deputy. “Who is going to elect the judge from the European Union?” Jagland asked.

Other changes brought by the Lisbon treaty include an agreement by the EU’s national governments that EU laws, rules and regulations should be subject to the scrutiny of the European Court of Human Rights. That could result in a flood of cases to the Strasbourg court on issues ranging from the EU’s directive on working time to rights of EU citizens living in other member states. 

Jagland acknowledged that the EU’s membership of the convention would produce “complications”, but argued that “the important thing is that everybody is under the same case law and the same court” in Europe.

Council of Europe officials expect the negotiations with the EU to last into 2011.