Thank you.

So I am a politician.

My contribution now is not based on any research.

It is based on my work experience and my observations from 2009 to 2019 as a member of the European

Parliament.

I worked in the Foreign Relations Committee and the Human Rights Subcommittee and I chaired

the Working Group on the EU-UN relations.

And yes, I see the conditions for global human rights work have become more difficult.

The working conditions for human rights activists, human rights NGOs and international human

rights bodies become increasingly difficult and this includes also the implementations

of the human rights policies of the European Union.

Since 2012, the EU has its own human rights strategy in its foreign affairs and following

action plans we in the Parliament do monitor.

We see on the one hand that the human rights defenders are very well connected and each

attack against them or nearly each is known very quickly and publicly globally.

However, the dimension in which governments and non-state actors attack them has been

growing in brutality, in size and are very systematic.

And more often laws have been used to hinder them to do their work and to criminalize them.

Also the UN special procedures and rapporteurs have been subject to harassment and concrete

threats in order to silence them or to shy away the victims or witnesses to talk to them.

And I think the setbacks in this area are significant but I would not draw the conclusion

that we live in a post-human rights area because we see at the same time an increase in action

in fighting, in campaigning and in networking by human rights defenders and their NGOs.

They call for more and better human rights implementation and not less.

And they also call for strengthening of the international human rights bodies at the UN

or regionally or on national level.

And we see more and more political leaders refuse or openly ignore the essence of the

Universal Declaration of Human Rights that all human beings have inherent equal and undeniable

rights and that all are equal before the law.

And so I refer of course also to a lot of the member states of the European Union.

Open racism, the rhetoric of exclusion of minorities or of those who think and live

differently and direct attacks against the rule of law standards are no longer restricted

to individual notorious countries or regions.

Within the European Union we have the Hungarian and the Polish government that undermine the

fundamental standards of rule of law in their countries and so far couldn't care less about

the started sanctions against them by the European Union.

Just to quote the colleague from Austria I think is still here, the previous Minister

of the Interior last year when Austria had the presidency of the European Union said

publicly or stated publicly sometimes the law has to follow politics and not the other

way around and that's the level of a Minister of Interior and he didn't step back because

of this, this was for other reasons.

Does this mean we live in a post-human rights area?

No, I think we still have many citizens also in those countries who take to the streets

like in Hungary and in Poland and fight against these developments and demand a corrective

of policies that undermine the independence of the judiciary, the freedom of the press

and independence of the media.

And we still have I think more or less good functioning institutions regionally and courts

that defend the protection of human rights and this cannot be ignored.

Just I think some days ago we have a decision of the European Court who decided that the

Polish policy of lowering the pension age for judges is against the European Union's