The Human Rights Breakthrough of the 1970s: The European Community and International Relations

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During the 1970s human rights took the front stage in international relations; fuelling political debates, social activism and a reconceptualising of both East-West and North-South relations. Nowhere was the debate on human rights more intense than in Western Europe, where human rights discourses intertwined the Cold War and the European Convention on Human Rights, the legacies of European empires, and the construction of national welfare systems. Over time, the European Community (EC) began incorporating human rights into its international activity, with the ambitious political will to prove that the Community was a global “civilian power.” This book brings together the growing scholarship on human rights during the 1970s, the history of European integration and the study of Western European supranational cooperation. Examining the role of human rights in EC activities in Latin America, Africa, the Mediterranean, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, The Human Rights Breakthrough of the 1970s seeks to verify whether a specifically European approach to human rights existed, and asks whether there was a distinctive ‘European voice’ in the human rights surge of the 1970s. Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Illustrations Editors and Contributors Editors Contributors Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction: The place of human rights in European integration Part I: The European community and human rights violations in the world Chapter 1: Knocking on Europe’s doors: Community Europe and human rights after dictatorial rule in Southern Europe (1974–7) Chapter 2: Introducing human rights within development cooperation policies: The European Community between the United States and the Soviet Union (1968–79) Chapter 3: A reluctant promoter: The EC, CSCE and human rights in East–West relations Chapter 4: EC member states’ stance on human rights issues: The perspective from the UN General Assembly, 1970–9 Part II: Member states, supranational institutions, European parties Chapter 5: The European Union of Christian Democrats and the controversy regarding the Spanish accession to the EC in the 1970s: The human rights problem Chapter 6: The Socialist Group of the European Parliament and human rights in the second half of the 1970s Chapter 7: An awkward partner?: Britain’s human rights policy and EC relations, 1977–9 Chapter 8: Between restrictiveness and humanitarianism: EC institutions and the asylum policies of the 1980s III: Other Europes Chapter 9: Human rights NGOs in Western Europe and the intervention of the Council of Europe in the Nigerian Civil War Chapter 10: Beyond victims of communism?: Austria and the human rights question in the 1970s Part IV: After the breakthrough: The European Union and human rights Chapter 11: The Twelve and the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights Chapter 12: The European Union’s influence on the Dutch position in the United Nations Human Rights Commission, 1995–2003 References Index