WRITTEN QUESTION E-1843/03 by Charles Tannock (PPE-DE) to the Council. The Council's view that terrorism is not a human rights abuse.
Date: 2003-06-03
Institutions: European Parliament, Provisional data
Subjects: International Criminal Court, crime against humanity, human rights, interpretation of the law, terrorism

C 51 E/146

Official Journal of the European Union

EN

26.2.2004

microbiological criteria. Member States may, while ensuring that Community health requirements are
observed and that such products are sold in their territory, have certain flexibility regarding their
production and placing on the market in order to take account of particular habits of consumption.
Sausages, which have undergone treatment such that the cut surface shows that the product no longer has
the characteristics of fresh meat, must have been produced in accordance with Community rules on meat
products. So-called specified BSE risk material, such as skull and spinal cord of bovine, ovine and caprine
animals, have not been allowed in any food or feed since 1 October 2000. At the moment, the entire set
of Community rules on food hygiene has been ‘recast’ into a limited number of proposals, which are under
review in the Parliament and in the Council (First reading).

(1) OJ L 323, 26.11.1997.

(2004/C 51 E/161)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1843/03

by Charles Tannock (PPE-DE) to the Council

(3 June 2003)

Subject: The Council’s view that terrorism is not a human rights abuse

During the debate on the (Van Hecke) Annual Human Rights Report in the Foreign Affairs Committee of
the European Parliament last year the Commission spokesman asked for an amendment from the report to
be deleted on the grounds that it was the official position of the European Commission that terrorist
offences could not constitute human rights abuses but were ordinary crimes that should be tried in
national courts.

This appeared to be consistent with the position of the European Council which refused to sign a common
declaration with the Indian government at the EU-India Summit at New Delhi in November 2001 which
described terrorism as ‘a grave violation of human rights’ after the intervention of EU legal experts.

This issue also raised its head at the time of the conclusion to negotiations over the birth of the
International Criminal Court in the summer of 1998, when it was recognised in Annex 1 to the Final
Resolution to the Final Act of the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the
Establishment of an International Criminal Court that terrorist acts, by whomsoever they are committed,
are serious crimes of concern to the international community, whilst regretting that no generally
acceptable definition of the crime of terrorism could be agreed upon for the inclusion within the
jurisdiction of the Court. After affirming in the same Annex that the Statute of the International Criminal
Court provides for a review mechanism which allows for a future expansion of the jurisdiction of the
Court,
it was recommended that ‘a Review Conference pursuant to Article 123 of the Statute of the
International Criminal Court consider the crimes of terrorism and drug crimes with a view to arriving at
an acceptable definition and their inclusion in the list of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court.’ That
said, the failure to agree on a definition of terrorism notwithstanding, there is nothing in the text of the
Statute which specifically requires the crimes listed to be committed by state actors or which specifically
excludes terrorists or terrorist acts from the provisions of the Statute, whilst, interestingly, both Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch affirmed at a formal hearing of the European Parliament’s Foreign
Affairs Committee last year that they regarded the September 11 attacks as ‘crimes against humanity.’

Is it the Council’s view that terrorist acts do not constitute human rights abuses and does the Council
support the inclusion of a list of terrorist crimes within the Statute of the ICC?

Reply

(7 October 2003)

At this stage, the Council has not discussed the question of the possible inclusion by the Review
Conference of a list of
terrorist crimes within the Rome Statute. More generally, on questions of
intepretation of the Rome Statute, the Council refers to its reply to question E-0390/02.