Normative by nature? The role of coherence in justifying the EU's external human rights policy

In order to assess the EU's 'normative power', the article compares the justification of the EU's external policy regarding the death penalty and minority protection, respectively. Starting from the assumption that policies can be justified by utility- , value- or rights-based arguments, it reasons that in complex argumentations all types are deployed, so that coherence between different justifications is an important legitimizing factor. In the death penalty case, EU policy developed in line with the requirements of argumentative coherence, while in the case of minority protection, the shift from utility- to value-based arguments exposed incoherence between the internal and external application of the policy. This incoherence triggered a discursive 'realignment strategy', linking the external policy back to established EU norms. However, this does not suspend the tension between the different internal and external approaches to minority protection, thereby diminishing the EU's normative power in this issue area. Keywords: Death penaltyEuropean Unionexternal relationshuman rightsminority protectionnormative power. Notes 1. The views expressed by the authors in this article are strictly personal. 2. Greece was until recently (2004) the only EU member state which – although abolitionist for ordinary crimes – had not yet abolished the death penalty from the statute books completely. For an analysis of abolition in Europe, see also Manners Citation(2002). 3. The term 'acquis éthique' has been used by the European Parliament in its resolution on the implementation of 'human rights/democracy' budget lines relating to campaigns in favour of a moratorium on capital punishment (European Parliament Citation2001: 395). 4. Until today, no treaty provision explicitly refers to capital punishment, but at the occasion of the Amsterdam Treaty revision, the Intergovernmental Conference adopted a declaration on the death penalty and Article 2.2 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights confirms that abolition forms part of the European 'ethical acquis'. 5. For the period 2002–2004 the Commission has earmarked 12 million euro for supporting respective projects under the EIDHR (European Commission Citation2001b). 6. Additionally, minority issues are addressed via two other, far less institutionalized norms: first, the EU is officially committed 'to respect and to promote the diversity of its cultures' (Article 151 EC-Treaty; cf. Article 22 Charter of Fundamental Rights and Article II-82 Constitutional Treaty). Second, the Union has started several policy initiatives to combat racism and xenophobia. 7. This security-based argumentation is in itself not unproblematic, given ethnic tensions in Western Europe, e.g. in Northern Ireland or the Basque country. Western governments have sought to deflect this counter-argument by distinguishing minority issues from terrorist activities and excluding the latter from being a concern for international minority protection instruments (Brett Citation1993: 158). 8. Among the old member states, the Framework Convention has been signed, but not yet ratified by Belgium, Greece and Luxembourg; France has not even signed it. Cf. http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/EN/CadreListeTraites.htm (1 July 2005).