| Speech by Dagmar Karsch, Czech Coordinating Office secretary, before the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament in Brussels Brussels , March 18, 2004 . Ladies and gentlemen, We came here to defend our position expressed in our petition 270/2003. This petition is attacking the third part of an official document called The Czechoslovak Presidential Decrees issued 14. October 2002 by the European Commission. In our objections to this document we concentrated solely on Part 3 called The Restitution Legislation of the 1990s, which has nothing to do with Benes decrees. It all started April 10, 2002 with a press release of the European Commission issued by Messrs. Zeman and Verheugen, which stated:
Please notice that this communication from the European Commission stresses that discrimination on grounds of nationality is prohibited and that the Czech authorities are conducting a review of their legislation in order to put it in line by the time of the Czech Republic accession to the EU. They never did any review! The day of the press release, Mr. Vaclav Klaus, now president of the Czech Republic , then leader of the Civic Democratic Party, protested very vehemently, as he is known to be a stubborn opponent of all forms of restitutions of the property seized illegally by the Communists. The next day he said no more. Obviously, he was told to calm down, that the whole process of “examination” is just a show for the public and everything is already prepared and decided in advance behind the scene. This is quite significant for our statement that the European Commission, in furthering its political goals, disregards any laws of the Czech Republic and decisions of the Czech Constitutional Court favourable to the victims. The Commission never mentioned Czech Act 119/1990, which nullified all politically motivated verdicts of incarceration and property confiscation from the Communist period, so that all those confiscations, according to the Czech legislature, never took place. This Act must be or should be known to the Commission. The Commission further, by intention. by deceit or by shoddy work, never mentioned decisions 363/98, 117/96, 67/97, 130/96, 117/93 of the Czech Constitutional Court which all claim that due to law 119/1990 overturning Communist verdicts ex tunc, the original ownership of properties confiscated by Communists was never lost. How come that these legal documents were never mentioned by the European Commission? How come that the Commission compromised and twisted Art. 14 of the Convention, which forbids any discrimination by stating that the ECHR has no jurisdiction over stand-alone discrimination claims? Where did that come from? How come the Commission ignores Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union , quote: 1. The Union is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law, principles that are common to the Member States. 2. The Union shall respect fundamental rights as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms signed in Rome on 4 November 1950 . How come the Commission ignores Art.21 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, quote: Within the scope of application of the Treaty establishing the European Community and of the Treaty on European Union, and without prejudice to the special provisions of those Treaties, any discrimination on grounds of nationality shall be prohibited . Report of prof. Frowein, on which the Commission relies, states:” It is beyond doubt, therefore, that provisions as Articles 49 TEU and 6 TEU must be interpreted in a manner, which looks to the future and not to the past. On the other hand, it cannot be excluded that provisions having been adopted in earlier periods may have legal effects, which must be evaluated as to their compatibility with Articles 49 and 6 TEU.” What does this double-speak try to tell us? We cannot find anything in these articles about their application only in the future. Commenting on United Nations Human Rights Committee condemnation of Czech discrimination, prof Frowein states: “ One could, for instance, imagine the reopening of the time limit on the basis of the accession negotiations. It is, therefore, of importance to discuss the views of the UN Human Rights Committee .” Did the Commission discuss those views? Human rights introduced by these articles and specified in the Convention are disregarded by the Czech Republic , by the European Commission and by the European Court . Discriminating laws are still used in the Czech Republic to discriminate and they are respected by the European Commission, which issued this corrupt paper and they were used by the European Court of Human Rights, which justified discrimination of American Czechs by Czech discriminating law! Imagine! Also, the Commission in its document called Summary Findings of the Commission Services, part 3 intertwines Benes decrees from 1945 to 1948 with the Restitution legislation dealing with the period 1948 to 1990. Exactly, as the Czechs are doing. Those are two altogether different issues. Czechs like to put them into one basket and the Commission copied this directly from them. Why does the Commission, in this paper talk about International Compensation agreements, which have no relation to restitutions whatsoever? Because they copied all of this from the Czechs without even looking at those agreements. This is our proof of incompetent work of the Commission. Beside our factual comments on this third part of Summary Findings, which are sufficiently outlined in our petition, we are proclaiming here, that the document is a corrupt fabrication of omissions, deceptive and misleading statements and that it shows the one-sided attitude of the agencies of the European Union. There is no desire or effort to implement the ideals and principles of the EU, the opposite is true. These agencies disregard the most relevant Czech legislation and decisions of the Czech Constitutional Court that favour the victims. Statements which have no relation to restitutions are included in this document for one reason only, to mislead and confuse the reader. Now I will tell you why all this is happening, why did the European Commission issue this document falsified in many ways to facilitate acceptation of the Czech Republic to the European Union, why did the ECHR circumvent Art. 14 of the Convention, which forbids any discrimination whatsoever, why are only 2 or 3 per thousand legitimate applications admitted. The agencies of the European Council are penetrated and in part taken over by the tentacles of the Czech government. An application against the Czech Republic does not go to an independent judge as envisioned by the Rules of Court. It goes first to the Czech office of the Court or at best, sometimes, to the Czech judge appointed by the Czech government. These tentacles kill the application before it can reach any independent authority. Why do they do that? Czech Republic is not a fully-fledged democracy yet. It does have executive and judicial powers separated just on paper, not in real life. To the agencies of the European Council the Czechs delegate or help to choose people who would never be delegated or appointed should they have their own independent opinion. They are humble servants of the government, who conform to the general policy of the government. This Summary Findings is relating word-by-word false information of the Czech government. The Court, while rejecting applications of Czech-American families, Poláček (38645/97 and Gratzinger (39794/98), used the same reasoning and same words as did the Czech Government in their Standpoint, namely that original owners of their family homes not only did not have existing possessions, but they did not even have a “legitimate expectation”! All that after the Czech Constitutional Court said several times that the ownership, due to Act 119/1990 was never lost! By the way, the ECHR copied this from the Standpoint of the Czech government word by word. There is no independence of those agencies of the European Council. They are intertwined with the governments, members of the Council. It may not be that harmful if the original founding states were in such positions. In case of the post-communist states, which have no sense of fair play, no actual separation of executive and judicial powers, it undermines the raison d’etre of these institutions. We accuse the European Court and the European Commission of accepting blindly all the falsehoods served to them by the Czech government. We recall Art. 53 of the Convention, which states: Nothing in this Convention shall be construed as limiting or derogating of any of the human rights and fundamental freedoms . . . and we claim that ECHR and EC are limiting and derogating from human rights specified in the Convention and according to Art. 54 we are asking the Committee of Ministers to intervene against any false interpretations of the word and spirit of the Convention. Especially we accuse the Commission for issuing this falsified and corrupted document called Summary Findings and are petitioning the European Parliament to bring radical change to this document and to the practice, which disregards the democratic values of independence and fair play. Dagmar Karsch, Secretary Ansbach, Germany |