At the end of last year, the European Commission’s London office sent the following note to several newsdesks:
Information note to Newsdesks: European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is not part of the European Union (EU)
Newsdesks and subeditors are asked to note that decisions of the European Court of Human Rights should not be referred to as EU decisions, and the judgements should not be attributed to “EU judges”, or any similar language. The European Court of Human Rights is part of the Council of Europe, a completely separate organisation to the European Union. The UK is a founding member of the Council of Europe, which was created in 1949 by the Treaty of London.
Council of Europe website: http://www.coe.int
Antonia Mochan, Head of Media at the European Commission’s London office, added:
Membership of the Council of Europe is now a precondition of EU membership, but the UK was a member of the CoE long before it joined the Common Market/ECC/EU and if it left the EU, I very very much doubt it would leave the CoE, and certainly wouldn’t do so automatically.
This note was issued because many journalists and columnists frequently confuse the European Court of Human Rights as being a European Union institution.
To take a recent example, on the 16th December last year, the papers were reporting a landmark judgement in which the ECHR criticised Ireland for it’s law against abortions.
In it’s headline, the Daily Mail said:
The article’s first sentence stated:
Irish pro-life campaigners reacted furiously today after the European Union ruled that a law banning abortion should be lifted.
The European Union made no such ruling.
Back in November, Ann Widdecombe took time from her busy dancing schedule to write a column on the ECHR’s insistence that Britain gives prisoners the right to vote. In it, she said:
[David Cameron] should tell the EU that Britain has too much sense to comply and then revise our own law so that it does not compel us to co-operate.
As Antonia Mochan said in response at the time:
The EU is always interested in what one of its leading members has to say, but if David Cameron takes Ann Widdecombe’s advice, it won’t get him very far. It is the Council of Europe, a completely separate organisation, that is responsible for the ruling on prisoners’ votes.
This article is from the Daily Telegraph and was published in July:
Despite saying that “EU judges” were responsible, the article then makes reference to the “Strasbourg court” and the European Court of Human Rights. Therefore, the Telegraph was incorrect to refer to ECHR judges as “EU judges” in its headline.
Writing about the same story, the Daily Mirror also made a similar mistake, claiming that:
In January 2009, The Sun claimed in an article that:
BRITAIN defied EU judges last night by handing two Iraqis accused of murdering British soldiers over to the Baghdad authorities.
However, the article then says:
The European Court of Human Rights had tried to block the handover at the last minute as the men could face the death penalty.
References to an “EU court” or to “EU judges” should only be made when it is the Court of Justice, the European Union’s highest court, that is being talked about.
The press’ confusion over the ECHR may seem to some to be just a small error but it does have consequences.
After reading articles like the ones above, most readers will ultimately understand that the European Union is responsible for the decisions of a court which is part of an entirely different institution. This essentially results in the EU being blamed for something it has no part of.
Is it really too much to ask that the journalists, columnists and sub-editors who so often fall for this mistake do their research before writing?
Would you rather they used "EU backed"?
Also, the ECHR judgment didn't actually tell Ireland to scrap its abortion laws – it ruled that where Irish law provides for access to abortion (as in the case of the mother's life being endangered), there should be practical access to it. Basically, the ECHR told Ireland to apply its own laws, rather than to scrap any.
Sounds like the Mail just picked up the phone to Youth Defence, a tiny fundamentalist anit-abortion group (and seemingly anti-ECHR/EU as well) for an opinion.
@Anonymous: To say the ECHR is "EU-backed" still implies that there's a connection between the two. As confusion over the ECHR is so prevalent, papers should be clear to indicate that the two are entirely separate.
Except that now the EU demands Council of Europe memebership the ECHR is EU backed.
It's a bit like claiming the internet watch foundation and the UK government are entirely separate. De jure yes. De facto not really.
Let's assume for a second that "EU-backed" is a valid term to use… The papers don't use this phrasing.
They say that the ECHR is the EU. ECHR judges are described as "EU judges". The ECHR itself is described as an "EU court". This is incorrect and misleading.
I can't imagine a situation in which a decision made by the Internet Watch Foundation would be presented as a decision made by the Government.
Being Council of Europe member is a pre condition to being an EU member. That does not change the fact that the EU has no control at all over the Council of Europe and its court. Not de jure and not de facto.
The ECHR is actually less EU backed as it is backed by its actual member states.