Freedoms

Abstract

Freedoms include personal dignity, civil rights, and political rights. For personal dignity, when considering violence perpetrated by police, there is a significant improvement until the very beginning of the twenty-first century, with the strengthening of existing institutions and the creation of new ones. Later, the index of Amnesty International displays the growth of State violence, mainly in 2015–17. As regards civil rights, a national movement is less affected than foreign movement. Especially in Poland, freedoms of movement protection have suffered the most from the recent change to some constitutional rules. Moreover, all countries—but especially France and the UK—saw restrictions on freedoms of mobility due to a set of administrative measures aimed at preventing terrorism. The protection of freedom of religion is stable. Finally, citizens continue to experience limitations to economic freedom. As for political rights, they were affected by the decline of the freedom of the press. The right to citizenship was affected by the waves of migration and the rise of international terrorism. These phenomena brought about defensive reactions and paved the way for a broad and easily politicized opposition to the extension of the rights to political participation and citizenship for people with foreign origins. Poland shows the most worrying deterioration, notably in terms of fundamental rights. There is relative stability in all other cases with lower and higher results. However, when considering all the freedoms, the critical aspect of putting at the core of our analysis is timing.