A little more clarity

The sentence of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the presence of crucifixes in Italian schools has triggered a wide-ranging debate both in the country directly cited in the sentence of the Court in Strasbourg, and in other States. The episode has also raised another by no means secondary aspect: the information given to citizens has not always been either clear or correct. In many cases there has been confusion about the institutions in question, their powers, their radius of action. On this question SIR Europe has interviewed Lucia Serena Rossi, professor of International Law at the University of Bologna, where she teaches Law of the European Union (a course held in English); she has also been a guest professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, at Strasbourg, Brussels, London, Beijing, Tokyo and Denver (USA).Professor Rossi, is it possible to define the profile of the Court in Strasbourg, and how it relates to the other Court that operates at the European level, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg?“Let’s begin by pointing out that the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has nothing to do with the EU. It was founded in 1954. In application of the European Convention for Human Rights of 1950, its mission is to defend and safeguard the fundamental rights of individual citizens who live in the member countries of the Council of Europe, of which it is the expression. There are 47 such states, i.e. almost double the number of those in the EU, and they include very different nations, also those that are not integrated between each other, for example Russia and Turkey, with very different legal systems, historical identities and cultures. Despite that, the Court defends citizens against violations of human rights committed by member States: for this reason it is a strongly independent organization. The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, by contrast, guarantees the effective and homogeneous application of EU law in the 27 member states of the European Union; it works alongside the other EU institutions (Parliament, Council and Commission) and is therefore inserted in a kind of balanced framework of complementary powers”.We’ve spoken of the European Convention for Human Rights: what is it?“The Convention, also known as the ECHR, is a treaty of international law, with which the signatory states pledge to guarantee the human rights and fundamental freedoms codified in it. It is a fairly short document and now rather dated, though it has been amended by various additional protocols. The Convention itself established the Court that invigilates over its application, together with the Committee of Ministers, which is the highest political body of the Council of Europe. In applying the Convention, the Court always tries to promote a view of fundamental rights which I would define as ‘a spearhead’ and works with enormous interpretative discretion”.Could we speak of a kind of “Greenpeace of rights”?“I would say that the action of the Court is not simple. First of all, because it must try to represent a very broad jurisprudential view, which is a kind of digest of the systems of the various States: the members of the Council of Europe, for example, include countries where various levels of democracy, different conceptions of personal and social rights exist; countries of the north and of the south of the continent, with very different histories, cultures and languages… In the second place, the Court tries to identify an ever wider range of rights, responding to life in our time; we may think of the protection of confidentiality in the age of the internet, a right that was not even imaginable back in 1950. In the third place, I would emphasize the following point: the Lisbon Treaty, which should come into force in a few weeks time, makes provision for the European Union to sign up to the Convention of Human Rights. This will involve specific problems on which it is now time to open a debate”.Immediately after the publication of the sentence of the Court on the banning of crucifixes from schools in Italy, there seems to have been some confusion in the information being given to citizens through the press and TV. Did you too have this sensation? What can be done to remedy it?“In effect it seems to me that both the mass media and politicians tend to fuel a degree of confusion on these matters. Some of our rulers often seize the opportunity, as in this case, to shift more blame onto the EU institutions than they really deserve. In short, Europe, in its various articulations, becomes a scapegoat for national political shortcomings. However, the problem remains of promoting greater knowledge of Europe to be able to have, as citizens, the opportunity to express one’s own motivated positions. In this sense, I would put schools in first place, by giving children the chance to study at least some aspects of the process of European integration. Then there’s the role of the media, which must improve the information, both quantitatively and qualitatively, that they give to citizens on the European Union and on other international organizations such as the Court in Strasbourg and the Council of Europe”.