Champion of Human Rights: The European Parliament and the Helsinki Process

This article investigates the involvement of the European Parliament - one of today's key European Union institutions - in human rights in the context of East-West relations during the 1970s and 1980s. It shows that the European Parliament used symbolic politics to style itself as champion of human rights in Europe and thus assert itself in two partially overlapping political arenas: the European Community and the broader Western European political arena. Using untapped archival materials, this study also suggests that in pursuing this goal European parliamentarians became part of the so-called transnational 'Helsinki network' which promoted respect for human rights in the Soviet bloc and contributed to raising the salience of this topic in international affairs.