Capital punishment is taken so seriously in Western Europe that the EU forbids it among all of its member nations. (The last execution practiced in the EU was by France in 1977.) This leaves the United States and Japan as the only two modern industrialized nations in the world who practice capital punishment.
In addition, Pope John Paul II (and by association the worldwide Roman Catholic Church) is morally opposed to capital punishment under any circumstances, as it qualifies as the taking of human life by human hands.
The following is from the 2000 European Union Annual Report on Human Rights:
Capital punishment raises a range of philosophical, religious, political and criminological questions. The EU countries have all concluded that the death penalty is a uniquely inhuman and irreversible punishment.
Even highly advanced legal systems, which rest upon the principle of the rule of law, including the principle of due process, are not immune to miscarriages of justice, for example through different interpretations of the law, convictions based on unreliable evidence, or a lack of adequate legal representation. This inevitably leads to the execution of the innocent. And the irreversible nature of capital punishment removes any possibility of correcting such miscarriages of justice.
Nor is there sufficient justification on either criminal or criminological grounds for maintaining capital punishment. Studies have failed to demonstrate scientifically that the death penalty deters crime any more effectively than other forms of punishment, such as life imprisonment. And capital punishment assumes that those convicted of crimes are incapable of rehabilitation. The European Union is therefore opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances. This view is increasingly shared throughout the international community. To date some 108 countries have abolished the death penalty in law (86 States) or in practice (22 States). And neither the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court nor the United Nations Security Council resolutions establishing the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda include any provision for the death penalty even for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
The EU has therefore agreed to promote universal abolition of the death penalty.