The EU's human rights policies are plagued by double standards: it applies radically different approaches in its external and internal operations. In this book, Andrew Williams reveals the nature and scope of this bifurcation and the resultant discrimination.

This bifurcation has direct implications for the EU's constitutional structure and its future human rights activities. It suggests that, through human rights language, conditions for conflict rather than integration have arisen, and that a system of double standards has been instituted. Williams therefore argues that the EU's claims to a credible human rights policy are suspect. This book examines the nature and scope of the bifurcation and explains its origins and development. In doing so it questions orthodox interpretations and provides a radical new reading of the EU's human rights law and practice. At its heart, the book claims that without a fundamental reappraisal of the basis upon which the EU responds to human rights, it will remain plagued by this ironical condition.

General Editor's Preface
Preface
Abbreviations
Table of EC Material
1. Introduction
2. Development Policy and Human Rights
3. Accession to the Community and Human Rights
4. The Scope of Internal-External Incoherence
5. Explaining Incoherence: the Orthodox Arguments
6. The Invention of Human Rights in the Community
7. European Identity and Human Rights
8. Conclusion: The Irony of the Community's Human Rights Policies
Bibliography
Index