Fundamental rights and good governance

The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union enshrines certain political, social and economic rights for EU citizens and those resident in member states. Under the charter, the EU must act and legislate consistently with it and the courts will not accept any member state implementing a law that does not comply with it.

A recent EU-wide survey found that Maltese citizens are among the least aware of the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, coming a close second to the Greeks in not having heard of the document and not having knowledge about its contents. However, both Malta and Greece appear to be in fairly good company because, overall, fewer than half of all EU citizens knew anything about it.

The good news to emerge from the survey was that as many as 85 per cent of Maltese respondents said they wished to learn more about where to turn to if their rights listed in the charter were violated.

The charter contains over 50 articles, divided into seven categories, the first six dealing with substantive rights and the last with the interpretation and application of the charter.

Thus, the first chapter, or title, guarantees the right to life, prohibits torture, slavery and the death penalty. The second covers liberty, privacy, marriage, assembly, education, work, property and asylum. The third title encompasses equality and the rights of children and the elderly. The fourth covers social and workers’ rights, including the right to fair working conditions and access to health care. The fifth title includes such rights as the eligibility to vote in elections to the EU Parliament and to move freely within the EU. It also includes several administrative rights, such as having good administration, access to documents and to petition the European Parliament. The sixth category covers all justice issues, including the right to a fair trial.

Although Maltese citizens may not have scored highly on knowledge and awareness of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, they would probably have known, if asked, about many of the rights listed above for the simple reason that most of these are based on the European Convention on Human Rights, which was established by the Council of Europe in late 1950. The Council of Europe is an organisation to which Malta has belonged since 1965 while it has only been a member of the EU for eight. Thus, we should not castigate ourselves too severely for being generally ignorant of the EU charter’s contents.

What is far more pertinent is to compare the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights with what the government and the Constitution, a subject that has received high-level attention in recent months, actually do in practice to give citizens those rights.

Of course, we enjoy many rights (the eminent Judge Giovanni Bonello discusses human rights in a Talking Point on the back page today). But, then, why is the Freedom of Information Act, a crucial element in the good administration, governance and accountability of any democracy, still not in force four years after it was enacted by this government? Why do we not yet have a Whistleblower Act?

The lesson that should be drawn from this survey is not so much that more Maltese citizens should know that the charter exists and what it contains. More importantly, the government should move to embed the rights set out in it in the governance of the country and in the Constitution.