18/10/2011 President
Strasbourg, 18.10.2012 – “It is no longer acceptable to make excuses when it comes to ratification of the European Social Charter,” said PACE President Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking today at a ceremony in Strasbourg to mark the Charter’s 50th anniversary.
“All human beings have basic rights, and these include health, employment and the right to be ‘free from want’,” he pointed out.
All Council of Europe member states should be bound by the Charter, the President added, just as they are bound by the European Convention on Human Rights. The two conventions together “make a whole” and should be treated with equal value.
To date, only 14 of the Council of Europe’s 47 member states allow “collective complaints” under the European Social Charter – which allows trade unions and international NGOs to bring collective complaints against states over social rights.
The collective complaints procedure “gives people a voice” which should not be ignored, the President added: “Collective complaints are a litmus test of how ready our governments are to listen. This is, really, a democracy test.”
Carina Ohlsson (Sweden, SOC) represented the Assembly's Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee at the ceremony, and at an earlier "brainstorming" on ways to improve ratification of the collective complaints procedure.