Situation of fundamental rights in the European Union (2010-2011)

Every year, Parliament sums up the human rights situation in the EU by listing violations in various domains, ranging from discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation and age to data protection, the treatment of migrants and access to justice.

Some types of human rights violation occur in all Member States.

The Greens believe that regular, country-specific human rights monitoring is needed in the EU. This monitoring should include the explicit naming and shaming of EU Member States which violate fundamental rights and values.

Our aim is to make sure that the EU is no less strict on human rights violations within the EU than it is with regard to third countries' human rights records.

It is important to eliminate these double standards.

The Greens succeeded in introducing a number of key demands, including the request that the Commission and the Council commit to the same regular human rights reporting as Parliament with a view to working together to produce a steady stream of recommendations and policy implementation measures.

The Greens mustered majority support for our call for a better scoreboard for measuring progress made on human rights.

The Greens did not manage to introduce country-specific references into the final text.

The EPP, ALDE and S&D all rejected the idea of naming and shaming Member States. In so doing they protected governments with poor human rights records, like Hungary's.

The EPP also blocked the introduction of systematic human rights monitoring and demands calling for equality of sexual orientation.

And instead of respecting the agreed consensus the EPP then submitted an alternative text of its own in an attempt to have things entirely its own way. This attempt failed.