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What role does language play in the refugee crisis? Dr Marie Göbel (Philosophy and Religious Studies) wrote a to the blog of intra-European research project  (NoVaMigra) about the grammar of 'European values'.

The idea of European values has seen a revival recently in EU politics. What do we mean when we speak of human rights, for example, as a European value? And what practical difference does this make?

European values

Maybe the most obvious implication of the phrase ‘European values’ is that it functions as an identity marker. European values are often understood as the values that ‘we Europeans’ (allegedly) share, that define our common identity as Europeans, our European ‘value community’. It is thus unsurprising that the phrase is often used interchangeably with the phrase ‘European way of life’ in political discourse. However, any construction of a ‘we’ involves the construction of some ‘other’ – some ‘not-us’ or ‘not-like-us’. Especially in immigration debates, this 'other' refers to (particular groups of) Non-Europeans who allegedly embrace a different canon of values than ‘we Europeans’. Consequently, they pose a potential threat to the ‘European value order’. Therefore – so this line of argument continues – they should be kept out of Europe. In this way, references to European values frequently ground anti-immigration arguments.

References to European values frequently ground anti-immigration arguments.

Human rights

To see this more clearly, consider the example of human rights. Respect of human rights is arguably one of Europe’s core normative commitments. Human rights have by definition two central features, namely that they are universal in the sense that all human beings have them, simply in virtue of being human, and that they entitle the right-holder to certain actions or goods (where this can be a moral or legal entitlement), and that others have a correlative duty to respect and protect that right. The EU acknowledges the universally binding character of human rights, and recognizes that they impose requirements on its policies. The central question is, then, what the EU has to do in order to meet its human rights commitment.

Human rights as European values

Now consider what happens in statements like ‘Human rights are a European value’. One can broadly distinguish two directions in which this statement might be taken. NGOs in particular can use it to point out (potential) human rights violations as something that is not only morally wrong but also at odds with the EU’s own self-understanding. In this case we would not speak of a reinterpretation of human rights as a value because the very idea of human rights as rights (rather than a value) remains untouched by this. Something quite different is it to reinterpret human rights as a European value. We encounter this shift in the context of immigration and immigrant integration debates, for instance. The immediate consequence of this is that both the universal character and the rights-character of human rights are being subverted. So, the question what respect of human rights requires of the EU is replaced by the question what is needed to protect the European value order. To address the former by reference to European values is thus unhelpful and eventually misleading.