3. Specification of the Concept

4. Every person may write to the institutions of the Union in one of the languages of the

Treaties and must have an answer in the same language.

3. Specification of the Concept

Many human rights require action on behalf of the government. These activities relate to the duties to respect, protect, and fulfil human rights.5 There are many rights, like the economic and social rights, which provide the conditions necessary for prosperity and well-being. More generally speaking, many economic, social, and cultural rights are related to the activities of the government and to governance in a broader perspective. It does not mean that everything has to be done by the government itself. The government has the responsibility to create the right framework and a good climate to enable the civil society to fulfil human rights and its aims.

Both groups of norms for the government—human rights norms and good governance norms—can only be realized by each other, so these norms are complementary to each other. Human rights need good governance and good governance needs human rights. This means that there is an interaction between these two types of norms and several of these norms are the same. For example, the principles of transparency and participation, which are principles of good governance, can be found in several international human rights treaties. In the literature,6 participation (and especially transparency) in the context of access to information is still recognized as a human right. I think the principle of human rights administration is important because, in a way human rights can restrict several principles of good governance. For instance, transparency can be restricted due to national security or right to a private life.

In this context, an interesting development is that several of these principles of good governance, like the participation or the transparency principle, are reflected in human rights. In this case, the principles of good governance are strengthened because of the legally binding nature of the human rights contained in international treaties. This development can be observed for several good governance principles. It is therefore not surprising that the right to good governance in general has emerged. This right to good governance has been included and elaborated in 2000 by the Nice Charter on Fundamental Rights of the European Union. This Charter became binding for all EU member states through the Treaty of Lisbon, which entered into force in 2009 in all EU countries, except for Poland and Great Britain. These countries did not accede to the Charter by signing an additional protocol of the Treaty of Lisbon. Thus, we can conclude that there is a clear interaction between the principles of good governance and the right to good governance.

The principle of good administration has been developed by the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union and is based on the existence of a community governed by the rule of law. Paragraph 1 of the article about the right to good administration reaffirms this general right, the essential elements of which are elaborated in paragraph 2. The right to good administration arises from a concern for equal treatment, in accordance with the jurisprudence of the Court, and with

5 UNHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, ‘What are human rights’, see <http://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/Pages/WhatareHumanRights.aspx>. 6 Hins and Voorhoof 2007.