Free movement and the right to protest
01 January 2003
The freedom of movement for all EU citizens, one of its four basic freedoms of the EU, is under attack when it comes to people exercising their right to protest.
The "freedom of movement" of people is held to mean the right of citizens to move freely between the 15 countries of the EU without being checked or controlled or having to say why they are travelling. Martin Bangemann, then the EC Commissioner for the Internal Market, told the European Parliament in 1992: "We want any EC citizen to go from Hamburg to London without a passport" (Statewatch, vol 2 no 6). This "freedom" was never uniformly implemented but today it seems very far away given from the numerous checks faced by airline passengers - and a Spanish proposal would extend the USA demand for personal details on all travellers going there prior to take-off to travel within the EU.
Post 11 September 2001 these checks are said to be necessary for safe air travel and to exclude suspected terrorists, "illegal" migrants (who are all seen as potential terrorists or criminals) and so-called "inadmissibles" from entering the EU. These moves come on top of the EU governments plans to combat cross-border protests put in place after Gothenburg (June 2001) and Genoa (July 2001) (Statewatch bulletin, vol 11 no 3/4).
Most surveillance checks concern air travel but when it comes to combating protests they extend to land borders too. Since June 2001, powers to introduce land border checks, under Article 2.2 of the Schengen Convention, have been invoked on 16 occasions by EU states and 12 of these concerned anticipated cross-border protests (Statewatch European Monitor, vol 3 no 3, 2003). Tens of thousands of protestors have been checked at land borders and thousands refused entry - some have been recorded on the Schengen Information System (SIS).
In December 2002 the Justice and Home Affairs Council noted the production of a "Security handbook" to counter protests at EU Summits and international meetings (like G8) held in the EU. The power to revise this handbook is to be undertaken by the unaccountable EU Police Chiefs Task Force, and the Security Office of the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union (the 15 EU governments) is to "advise" on operational plans to combat protests (see Viewpoint, page 21). Information, intelligence and "personal data" on:
potential demonstrators and other groupings expected to travel to the event and deemed to pose a potential threat to the maintenance of public law and order
are to be supplied by each national police and security agency to the state where the protest is planned - on a monthly, then weekly and finally daily basis up to the event. There is no suggestion that the data supplied be limited to those convicted of violent offences. The handbook says that EU member states should:
utilise.. measures to prevent individuals or groups considered to be a threat to the maintenance of public order from travelling to the location of the event
At land borders "preventive patrols and controls may be carried out" and "necessary arrangements for a quick and efficient" expulsion should be in place. Such plans are clearly intended to undermine the right to protest by treating all protestors as potential "suspects". There are, however, real limits on how effective they can be when thousands upon thousands travel to join hundreds of thousands from the host country (as happened in Genoa).
An article in this issue looks at what happened at Davos, Switzerland in January when despite promises the protest was stopped far away from the World Economic Forum meeting. It also looks at the plans being laid by the Swiss and French governments to counter protests in Evian, France at the G8 meeting in June (see page 20).
Freedom of movement and the right to protest are intrinsically linked in a democractic society, but will the endgame be an attempt to ban on EU travel to take part in a cross-border demonstration?