Towards ever greater coherence? Human rights policies in the evolving EU

Abstract

Coherence remains one of the most important challenges facing the European Union (EU) with respect to its commitment to human rights. While perfect coherence in EU human rights policy may never be possible, and is perhaps not even desirable, the normative coherence of EU human rights policy-making under international human rights law remains essential to uphold such a commitment and ultimately to avoid human rights violations by EU actors themselves. ‘Hard interests’, including security, managing migration, or economic policy, must never be used as an excuse to violate human rights, especially by the EU. The present chapter offers a number of suggestions to overcome different types of incoherence, and to promote normative, interest-based, and structural coherence in EU human rights action. Starting from this three-fold typology of incoherence, the chapter identifies different ways in which incoherence is a challenge for EU human rights policy, and offers suggestions to EU actors for opportunities to promote coherent human rights policy and best practices in this regard. Despite the EU’s complex institutional structure and web of competences, significant opportunities remain for the EU and its Member States to act coherently for human rights, both through law—in particular international and regional human rights law—and through the practice of EU actors themselves.

Public sector information in the European Union policy: The misbalance between economy and individuals

“…These insights ought to foster discussions on policy coherence and lead to a more holistic approach to policymaking. In alignment with other scholars, we understand that the training of policymakers on FR, especially on the intersection of the data economy and FR is crucial to ensure policy coherence (Ginsborg and Finlay, 2020). In this sense, policymakers should be more concerned with whether the regulatory environment complies with the FR and other legal principles rather than with the design of regulations ex-post of a given innovation (Butenko and Larouche, 2015).…”

“…This noted asymmetry between EU responsibilities and the implementation power for concerning FR results in coherence problems in EU policymaking. As a consequence, policy coherence is identified as the main challenge in the EU engagement with FR (Ginsborg and Finlay, 2020). Williams comes to the same conclusion drawing attention to the fact that institutional reasons could explain why other interests take precedence over FR in the EU framework.…”