I did not vote for the Cappato report for the following reasons:

1) Human rights are inalienable, indivisible and universally valid. Nonetheless, social and economic human rights and their massive violations world-wide find hardly any mention in the report. That millions of people are withheld the most elementary rights, that they – also on the basis of the highly problematic policy of the EU – have ever less food at their disposal, that starvation, illnesses, lack of living space are a cruel reality, education for many is inattainable, the rights of workers are trampled with feet – all of this is largely eclipsed.

2) Human rights violations that occur in the EU itself and those in which the EU participates on a world-wide scale, among other things by its military and armament policy and its ever more widespread military missions are not named. Human rights violations are only criticised outside, own deficits and responsibilities are ignored. The internal and external effects of neoliberal EU policy with their negative consequences for basic and human rights are not mentioned.

3) The report proceeds very selectively in its criticism, as shown by the choice of the criticised countries as well as the volume of the criticism reported. Human rights policy, however, if it wants to be credible, must not be founded on the principle of politically motivated arbitrariness.