The European Parliament as the Human Rights Gatekeeper of the Union?

Abstract

The question that is addressed in this paper relates to the relevance that the choice made by the Turkish Government not to recognise the Armenian Genocide may have with regard to Turkey’s accession to the European Union. On the one hand, the European Parliament considers this to be a key issue, as is confirmed by many resolutions passed over time. On the other hand, in the light of a strictly literal interpretation of the Copenhagen criteria, the European Council and the European Commission have ruled out that the refusal expressed by Turkey to recognise those facts could negatively affect the accession process. The purpose of this paper is to prove that the European Parliament has introduced a new ad hoc criterion to be imposed on Turkey because of the gravity of the Armenian genocide, and to provide a further element that may confirm the theory of the development par autoconstitution of the European Union legal system.