Page 149 - El État de los derechos humanos en el desarrollo sostenible

EL ETAT DE LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS EN EL DESARROLLO SOSTENIBLE

A strong criticism of the application of the human rights clauses has been, that their
application is too much influenced by geopolitical interests of the European Union and its

member states. Hence, cases like the Russian war in Chechenia in the late nineties, Israeli

military actions in Palestine in the early 2000´s or the forced disappearance of 43 students in

Mexico in 2014 did not cause any human rights action by the European Union.
Additionally, the European Union has not developed any objective and verifiable criteria

under which the EU does or does not apply its human rights clauses.

The second way of operation of the human rights clauses are positive elements, which do not

seek to suspend relations with the partner state but rather to establish a permanent political
dialogue with the partner countries. The suspension of trade and preferential agreements can

only be an ultima ratio. The idea of the positive elements is to develop and strengthen

human rights. The human rights clauses oblige not only the EU partner countries but also

the European Union itself. Evidently, civil and political human rights standards within the
European Union are very high and the EU has no major problems in this area. But human

rights do not only consist of civil and political rights but also of economic, social and cultural

human rights. These so called “welfare rights” are positively constructed, meaning that they
generally require the development of an active public policy for their effective application

and incorporation. Interestingly, both the internal European Union´s legal system and some

EU trade agreements recognize these rights. In this sense states Art. 3 para. 5 of the Treaty of
the European Union:

Article 3 (ex Article 2 TEU)

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