A tabloid-friendly guide to the EU and ECHR

While media watching, one thing you notice is a repeated confusion between the European Union (EU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) (run by the Council of Europe, CoE).

This may be completely inadvertent, but the Sun, Daily Mail and Express do make this mistake on a regular basis, amongst other "errors".

I thought I would help them out.

Wikipedia has the following diagram showing how the jurisdiction of various European bodies overlaps*, as well as a few extra bits**:

As you can see there is a clear overlap between the EU and CoE/ECtHR - in fact to join the EU you must be a member of the CoE/ECtHR - but it is clear that there is a significant difference between the two, even when simply looking at the members of each.

The main difference is that one is more trade-related; one more co-operation related.

The EU was set up in 1958 by various western European countries, but not the UK (which created the European Free Trade Association in response), to help them trade with each other.  In fact, the basic idea of the EU is to create an economic bloc between various countries via a single internal market.

The CoE was set up in 1949 - by the UK among others - is more of an inter-governmental co-operation organisation, kind of like a Europe-only UN, with a specific focus on civil rights by the European Convention on Human Rights, which the UK drafted, and a less obvious focus on pharmacology standards.

So while it can be seen that there are similarities between the two, there are obvious differences.

Hopefully, the tabloids will read this and take note, especially as the EU has already attempted to point this out, albeit without success.

* There are a few bodies which aren't shown on the diagram, including the Central European Free Trade Agreement (which will probably be swallowed up by the EU in the future given the EU's Candidates and Potential Candidates), and the Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia which is rarely mentioned in the UK.


** The other items are the European Free Trade Association; the European Economic Area; the EU Customs Zone; and the Schengen Area; as well as showing non-EU countries countries which have agreements to mint €s, but not those which decided to use it, without reaching a formal agreement, due to historic reasons.

How to Respond to Media Myths

This is a cross-post on The Sun - Tabloid Lies, Express Watch and Mail Watch.

When you read the Sun, Daily Mail and the Express over a long-enough period of time, you start to notice a few things.

One thing that crops up regularly are hysterical ranting posts over a few small topics, including the following:

• It's Political Correctness/'Elf-and-Safety gawn maaaddd!!!;
• Scandal as the NHS refuses treatment!!!!!/New miracle cure for [insert scary medical condition here] - this is a particular favourite of the Mail which appears to be on a quest to categorise everything into either causing or curing cancer;
• Eurocrats are trying to control our way of life!!!!;
• Immigrants taking over and guess who's paying?!!!!

We've noticed that a lot of these scare stories could be stopped by a little research, which we accept that pressed-for-time tabloid journalists, for whatever reason, are unable to do.

Therefore, in the spirit of co-operation, we've decided to help them out by listing great sources of information, thereby saving them valuable time:

• Health and Safety Executive - "Myth of the Month" - a useful site for any claims which are made about bizarre actions taken or prevented in the name of preventing accident;
• NHS Choices - Behind the Headlines - a very good site for any "miracle cure" stories;
• National Institute of Clinical Excellence - evidence-based guidelines on various health topics, which go a long way to help the NHS what medicines and treatments should and shouldn't be funded by the taxpayer;
• News from the European Commission in the UK - news on how the Eurocrats aren't necessarily trying to dictate how we live;

There are also a variety of websites which can be used for any "Bloody Foreigners! Coming over 'ere! Takin' our jobs! Takin' our wimmin!" stories*:

• The Refugee Council - The Truth About Asylum;
• National Assembly Against Racism - Mythbusting Guide (PDF); and also
• Mediawise's guide to the use of correct terminology. 

There are also more general fact-checking sites**:

• Fullfact.org; and 
• Channel 4's FactCheck Blog

Of course, any and all of these lists could also be used by anyone else who wants to know more about the articles which the Sun, Daily Mail and/or the Express publish.

If anyone has any other suggestions as what other sources our tabloid journalists could use, just leave them in the comments.

* Thanks to Tabloid Watch for these particular links
** Thanks to Bloggerheads for these suggestions

Can the Sun get a simple thing right? (No.)

The Sun's leader today again "confuses" the European Court of Human Rights with the European Union (url subject to change):

Yet he’s still here, costing us hundreds of thousands, because defending our own nation must take second place to EU human rights laws.

I say confuses because I can't be completely certain that the Sun isn't deliberately confusing the ECHR, which is connected with the Council of Europe, with the European Union, mainly because of the Sun's visceral loathing for the latter. It is however, as Nosemonkey notes, a reasonably common mistake, despite the fact that the ECHR was a product of the 1950s, while we didn't join the European Economic Community, the forebear to the EU, until the 1970s. We also had a major role in the set-up and drafting of the ECHR, which is another reason why the persistent claims that we're surrendering to Brussels over human rights is such abject nonsense.

In any case, the Sun's conflation will doubtless further cause resentment towards the European Union when it has nothing to do with it. On that point alone it registers as a mistake bordering on a lie.

Those loony European judges.

The Sun is typically outraged that European judges are once again daring to interfere with our judicial system, this time over their decision to defer Abu Hamza's extradition until they have considered his appeal.

The paper though does its best to make this as clear as mud, only making clear that this is temporary until five paragraphs into its article, while describing the judges as "clowns" and as being unlikely to be a target in the "war on terror" due to their nationality. This is ignorant and misleading because while most are from European countries that have not been targeted by Islamic extremism, the judges are of just one section of the European Court of Human Rights, while the president of the court is French, a nation which has dealt with Islamic terrorism for decades, and one of the vice-presidents is a Brit. Additionally, Bosnia has definitely suffered from Islamic extremism, and Poland is also a potential target due to its involvement in the Iraq war.

It's the Sun's complete lack of context though which most rankles and misleads its readers:

"This is just the latest example of how Europe rides roughshod over the UK. It’s time we stood up and said enough and no more."

If this is meant to give the impression that this decision is something to do with the European Union, then it works judging by the response of commentators. In fact, the European Court of Human Rights has got nothing to do with the EU or its forebear, the European Economic Community. Rather, the ECHR and its base, the European Convention on Human Rights are connected with the set-up of the Council of Europe, one of the main suggestions of a certain Winston Churchill. The drafting of the Convention was done under the supervision of Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, with it being ratified by the Council in 1953, with the Court itself set-up in 1959. The ECHR serves as the last potential point of appeal for someone who has exhausted all the other options in Britain, and has done since that date. This is neither new nor Europe riding roughshod over the UK: if anything, it's our creation riding over our other own creations.

The reality is that Hamza's appeal is hardly likely to succeed, but the Sun cannot possibly miss an opportunity to attack both Europe and the human rights brigade, all while not informing its readers of even the slightest of contexts.

A longer version of this post is available on my own blog.