European Anti-Terrorism and Human Rights: Recent Conflict and Division

This article delivers a human rights-based analysis of anti-terrorism policies in a European context, looking at the cases of the UK, Germany, and the EU. The article claims that all three players have at times breached human rights norms, either in terms of legal standards or in terms of the wider aims of the concept of human rights. The EU, however, provides at the same time as it breaches human rights, safeguards for the protection of the same. Human rights breaches could for the mentioned cases be detected both in terms of a more narrow legal approach to human rights connecting to legally binding rights documents and court rulings (e.g. in terms of data retention), but also in terms of a broader understanding of human rights, connecting to the wider aims of rights, such as the guarantee of dignity, freedom and justice (the ‘spirit of rights’). I further try to give some points on which short and long-term strategies might be alternatives to the rights-infringing policies that often are applied by European states when trying to counter-act the phenomenon of terrorism.