A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report published on Thursday stated that the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, overlooked the European Union’s founding principles and guidelines on human rights in the mission letters she wrote to the European commissioners for the new mandate of 2024 to 2029.
The report found that von der Leyen’s statement of goals for her second term as president of the European Commission overlooked human rights as an integral part of the foreign policy of the European Union (EU). In both her statement at the European Parliament and mission letters to the new EU commissioners, von der Leyen strictly focused on enforcing the EU’s “short-term interests” such as controlling migration with no consideration for respect and implementation of human rights, especially by foreign partners. The report also pointed to the criticisms made against the European Commission’s response to previous human rights crises and controversial deals signed with third countries, paticularly the Memorandum of Understanding with Tunisia.
Ursula von der Leyen has served as the president of the European Commission since 2019, and was reelected in July 2024 for a second term. In a statement delivered on September 18, she outlined the political guidelines that the European Commission will implement over the next five years. These guidelines include deepening the European single market, pursuing the EU’s commitment to the Green Deal and putting forward a new Clean Industrial Deal that will allow EU countries to decarbonize their industries, mobilize private funding by creating a European Savings and Investments Union, fighting cyber criminality, boosting research and innovation in technology, and building new trade partnerships.
While human rights is a founding principle of the EU and an objective of its foreign policy, HRW pointed out that von der Leyen did not include the European human rights standards in the political guidelines of the Commission for the upcoming five years.
According to Article 21 of the EU founding treaty, the EU’s foreign actions must align with its founding principles which the union also seeks to promote. The founding principles include democracy, the rule of law, and the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The same article adds that the EU should seek to develop relations and partnerships with organizations and countries that share the same principles. Additionally, the EU created a series of human rights guidelines on various issues, ranging from children’s rights in armed conflicts to access to drinking water and sanitation.
At the end of its report, HRW asserted that by overlooking human rights, von der Leyen’s vision for a new Europe would be “flawed and counterproductive”. It also called on von der Leyen and the EU commissioners to reintroduce human rights to the guidelines of the EU’s policy.
