If you have read all the #MeAndMyRights entries up until now, you should know that the EU does not have many ways to protect human rights inside its member countries. Let’s recap:

• The EU itself - when it creates new laws or policies - has to obey the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. When EU countries are implementing a piece of EU law (for example, the rights you have as an air passenger when your flight is delayed or cancelled), they have to make sure that they obey the Charter as well (for example, by not allowing airlines to discriminate against old people when paying compensation).

• Some EU laws protect particular human rights, like data protection, the right to equal treatment, the rights of victims of crime and persons accused of crimes. EU countries have to implement these EU laws just like any other piece of EU legislation.

• Sometimes EU funding is used to improve human rights (OK, maybe I haven’t mentioned this before, but the EU is complicated and it’s hard to cover everything), for example, to build schools, universities, hospitals and or to help people retrain for a new job after being made redundant.

'Systemic threat'

Outside these situations, though, the EU has never really had much power to step in to protect human rights. Except for Article 7. And we know from last time, that Article 7 is not very useful as a way of preventing countries from violating rights, or putting the situation back to normal.

In 2013 EU governments, who make up the Council of the EU, asked the European Commission to suggest how the Union could do more to safeguard human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

In 2014, the European Commission published a ‘framework’ on the rule of law. Simply put, the Commission explained a procedure that it would follow, if ever it thought that there was a ‘systemic threat’ to the rule of law in an EU country.

The rule of law refers to a set of principles that are designed to prevent a government from abusing its powers. Among other things, the rule of law requires governments to act within the limits of the law, in particular the national constitution, but also international human rights standards.

By ‘systemic threat’ the Commission means that the courts in a country are not able to make sure that the government acts within the law - for example, if a government refuses to obey a judgment from a court.

When the Commission activates its rule of law framework it will investigate the country in question, ask the government to explain what it has done, and then make recommendations for the government to follow. If the government refuses to cooperate, the Commission does not have any powers to punish it. But the Commission does still have the option to try to trigger Article 7.

We still do not know how effective the rule of law framework is in practice. It has been activated once in January 2016 in relation to Poland. But we do know that the Commission has not activated the framework every time there is a serious problem in a country: it has not used the framework with Hungary or Spain, for example.

Show and tell

After the Commission announced its rule of law framework, some EU governments in the Council decided that they wanted something more. So the Council decided that it would have a meeting once each year where governments would talk about the rule of law.

This process is called the ‘rule of law dialogue’. The first rule of law dialogue took place in November 2015. The next one will take place in May 2016.

The first rule of law dialogue was pretty easy on governments. It lasted only 2.5 hours and governments were asked to talk about one good thing and one bad thing in their own country when it came to human rights. Countries did not criticise or offer help or advice to each other and they did not make recommendations to each other.

After the meeting, ministers had a group hug, took out their teddy bears, and had an afternoon nap. Just kidding. If the next rule of law dialogue follows the same pattern, it’s difficult to see how it will help human rights in the EU. We made some recommendations to the Council on how they could improve that you can read here.

Power to punish

Many Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are not satisfied with the Commission’s rule of law framework or the Council’s rule of law dialogue. These MEPs would like the Union to come up with a procedure that will study every member country regularly so that the EU can help to identify and correct rights violations.

They would like the EU to have power to punish governments that refuse to follow the Union’s recommendations. This year, the European Parliament will ask the European Commission to come up with a proposal for legislation that would create this kind of system.

This kind of monitoring system is a good idea, but the Commission has already said a few times that it is not interested in creating anything new. So the European Parliament will have to come up with something by itself. We have come up with some suggestions for MEPs here.