European MPs’ motion calls for Hong Kong to withdraw extradition bill and start democratic reform
- The motion, to be debated in European Parliament on Thursday, also seeks EU-wide ban on supplying weapons to the city’s police
- It condemns interference by China in Hong Kong and asks Beijing to uphold the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration
“The Chinese government is bound by the Joint Declaration to uphold Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy and its rights and freedoms,” it said.
If the European Parliament passes the motion when it votes on it on Thursday, the parliament’s president will be instructed to forward the recommendation to the European Council – the 28 leaders of the EU member states – as well as the European Commission and the governments of Hong Kong and Beijing.
Some high-profile signatories included the European Parliament’s vice-president Fabio Massimo Castaldo; David McAllister, chair of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee; Lithuania’s ex-prime minister Andrius Kubilius; and Andrus Ansip, former vice-president of the European Commission.
The motion also demanded peaceful protesters be immediately released, with their charges dropped.
Calling on the Hong Kong government to formally drop the extradition bill, it notes that Carrie Lam, the city’s leader, had already announced “that the widely loathed legislation was ‘dead’ whereas she stopped short of announcing that the bill would be withdrawn”.
Amid reports that Germany and Britain are considering suspension of arms sales to the Hong Kong police, the European Parliament’s motion “calls for the EU, its member states and the international community to work towards the imposition of appropriate export control mechanisms to deny China, and in particular Hong Kong, access to technologies used to violate basic rights”.
Former Finnish economy minister Mauri Pekkarinen, and former Czech defence and justice ministers Alexandr Vondra and Jiri Pospisil also endorsed the motion.
Britain suspends exports of tear gas, rubber bullets to Hong Kong police
A slew of ex-foreign ministers – Anna Fotyga from Poland, Tonino Picula from Croatia, Estonian Urmas Paet and Sandra Kalniete from Latvia – also joined the call.
Apart from the call for the bill’s withdrawal, protesters have demanded the introduction of universal suffrage, which some see as the way to avoid a repeat of the Hong Kong government’s attempt to push through the bill.
The European Parliament motion called on the Hong Kong government to introduce “systematic reform to implement direct elections for the position of chief executive and to the Legislative Council”.