The week could not have ended on a worse note for those defending human rights and rule of law within the European Union. On the exact same day Joshua Wong was led before court again on yet more trumped up charges to silence him and those like him standing up for freedom and their constitutionally guaranteed rights, rather than discussing sanctions against those responsible finally made possible by the adoption of the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime on December 7, the Permanent Representatives to the EU Council sat together to agree in principle on the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with China (CAI).

As a bad omen, this last-minute acceleration by the German Presidency of the European Union had been in the air for some time although it was consistently refuted as an impossible deal to conclude by the end of the year. For once though, it seems the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda had it right and they were definitely more open about it than the EU had been towards its citizens, or indeed, towards their elected representatives in the European Parliament.

After hearing from the European Commission that the deal currently on the table is “as good as it gets”, no doubt due to last minute concessions by Beijing in an attempt to take the most out of Chancellor Merkel’s fading time in office and using the brief momentum of opportunity before power is fully transferred to the Biden Presidency in the US, the Council level discussion would have taken place in a “serene and substantially positive” way and there would be an agreement in principle between the twenty-seven Member States although some painful issues still remain open, starting respect for labor rights where according to sources reported by SCMP “China must demonstrate a strong commitment to ratifying the ILO conventions on forced labor”.

Months of negotiations would still be expected to polish final details, but there appears to be a consensus that the opportunity to conclude is unique, which is why the option of using the fast-track procedure has been floated around, thus avoiding its ratification in national parliaments. In short, a preferential track for the People’s Genocidal Republic of China.

If this is to be confirmed, what comes to mind is the famous shakespearian frase “there’s something rotten in the state of…” the EU. A badly written tragicomedy not only with regard to the tortured, sterilized, imprisoned, enslaved, persecuted and silenced peoples in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Southern Mongolia and indeed the whole of China, but also for the image the German-led European Union is projecting into the world in concluding a deal Xi Jinping is said to have taken an unusual but enormous interest in as it would represent an enormous boost to his image despite the slew of reports on gross human rights violations coming out this year and wane efforts for an EU-US consolidated partnership re China. It was reported that geopolitical questions and the question of a plausible negative impact on the EU-US relationship - which was expected to be reinforced under the new Presidency also through a US-EU dialogue precisely on China - were hardly touched upon or dismissed at the meeting on Friday morning.

Moreover, this week’s modus operandi is a textbook example of the worst criticism the current European institutional set-up is often confronted with, critiques the very same people pushing CAI try to repudiate on a daily basis: the growing lack of EU credibility on the world stage in matters of rule of law and human rights, the democratic deficit in the EU and the non-transparent way of doing things within the Brussels bureaucracy.

Let’s roll back to the beginning of the past week for a moment. The Shanghai Files were released, proof of Beijing’s declared policies regarding the ever tighter control of the Communist Party apparatus over private companies, whether Chinese or foreign, a practice already denounced as problematic years ago by European business executives. Moreover, a new report by Dr. Adrian Zenz was published documenting evidence on forced labor practices of the Uyghur population in the hand-picking of what amounts to 20% of the world’s cotton.

Applause must go to the European Parliament which immediately dealt with the new evidence in its plenary session on Thursday morning, with a series of strong and unequivocal statements in support of those suffering at the hand of the Chinese communist regime. Above all it adopted a Resolution with an overwhelming majority of 604 votes against 20. A Resolution that could not speak more clearly as to what the position of Parliament is and what the EU’s position as a whole - if it were to be true to its founding Treaty obligations in the matter of human rights - should be.

Among a series of concrete measures, Parliament explicitly called for the establishment of Magnitsky-style sanctions against Chinese government and corporate officials for forced labor practices in the People’s Republic of China and states that it “is of the opinion that the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with China must include adequate commitments to respect international conventions against forced labor; considers, in particular, that China should therefore ratify ILO Conventions 29 and 105”.

Parliament therefore demonstrates that it has learned the lesson about the promises made by China in recent years: they mean absolutely nothing to the leadership of the Communist Party. Suffice it to look at how the international agreement on Hong Kong’s governance is being treated: nothing more than waste paper for Beijing. The EP is therefore rightly not asking for a further “commitment to”, but for direct and preliminary action on the Chinese side before signing any agreement. As we have seen above, this is not what seems to be the idea of the Commission, which is well aware that it can obtain at most a vague promise which - as usual - will not be kept.

It is hard therefore not to read the actions put in motion by the Commission and the Council following the European Parliament’s vote as an insult to its overwhelming majority, thanked for “its commitment and persistence in raising awareness on the subject”, but then promptly ignored in the usual game between the Commission and (main) European capitals. Moreover, it appears from parliamentary sources that the great steps forward that would have been made in recent weeks remain unknown to them, thus increasing the impossibility of evaluating correctly and above all of being able to constructively discuss the issue. This absence of debate would only increase if the Agreement is effectively fast-tracked, thus also eliminating that annoying democratic passage in the national Parliaments of Member States.

There is no doubt that if the Agreement were to actually contain what the European Union hoped when negotiations launched seven years ago - but on which the very EU studies remained skeptical until a few weeks ago - it would be an important step forward compared to the current bilateral agreements between various Member States and the People’s Republic of China. Unfortunately, we do not know whether what was actually hoped for has been achieved, where concessions have been made, and what fundamental points are missing. Everything is and remains covered by absolute secrecy, making public debate completely impossible.

Given the role assumed by the People’s Republic of China and the huge geopolitical issues at stake right now; given the EU’s human rights obligations and the ongoing increased repression of these values by, yet not only within, China; given the right of citizens to know and to partake in a public debate, and given even more so the sacred right for their elected representatives - both at European and national level - to be adequately informed, it seems clear that the modus operandi in the specific case cannot but create strong doubts and raise some fundamental questions:

Why this fear of an informed and public debate? Why the secrecy and the evident desire to keep Parliaments out of the question? Why this gift to the Chinese regime right now, despite the “grave concerns” about the omnipresent repression? And above all: why this haste, Frau Merkel?

These are questions on which I, as a European citizen, hope the European Parliament, as the last true bastion for human rights and European democracy in what promises to be a possible clash between European institutions, will continue to seek answers and above all, obtain them.

(Laura Harth, A human rights activist, she coordinates activities with the Global Committee for the Rule of Law “Marco Pannella” (GCRL). She also acts as a regional liaison for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).)

We invite you to join the conversation by submitting columns to our opinion section: [email protected]

Apple Daily reserves the right to refuse, abridge, alter or edit guest opinion columns for accuracy, length, clarity, and style, and the right to withdraw and withhold columns based on the discretion of our editorial page editors.

The opinions of the writers do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editorial board.

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play