Council of Europe

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Conseil de l’Europe
Logo
Flag
AbbreviationCoE
FormationTreaty of London
TypeRegional intergovernmental organisation
HeadquartersPalace of Europe, Strasbourg, France
LocationEurope[b]
Membership46 member states5 Council observers3 Assembly observers
Official languagesEnglish, French
Other working languages: German, Italian[1][2]
Secretary GeneralMarija Pejčinović Burić
Deputy Secretary GeneralGabriella Battaini-Dragoni
President of the Parliamentary AssemblyTiny Kox
President of the Committee of MinistersLuigi Di Maio
President of the CongressAnders Knape
Websitecoe.int

The Council of Europe (CoE; French: Conseil de l’Europe, CdE) is an international organisation founded in the wake of World War II to uphold human rights, democracy, and the rule of law in Europe.[3] Founded in 1949, it has 46 member states, with a population of approximately 675 million, and operates with an annual budget of approximately 500 million euros.[4]

The organisation is distinct from the European Union (EU), although it is sometimes confused with it, partly because the EU has adopted the original European flag, created for the Council of Europe in 1955,[5] as well as the European anthem.[6] The Council of Europe is an official United Nations Observer.[7]

Being an international organization, the Council of Europe cannot make laws, but it does have the ability to push for the enforcement of select international agreements reached by member states on various topics. The best known body of the Council of Europe is the European Court of Human Rights, which functions on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The council’s two statutory bodies are the Committee of Ministers, comprising the foreign ministers of each member state, and the Parliamentary Assembly, composed of members of the national parliaments of each member state. The Commissioner for Human Rights is an institution within the Council of Europe, mandated to promote awareness of and respect for human rights in the member states. The Secretary General presides over the secretariat of the organisation. Other major CoE bodies include the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and the European Audiovisual Observatory.

The headquarters of the Council of Europe, as well as its Court of Human Rights, are situated in Strasbourg, France. English and French are its two official languages. The Committee of Ministers, the Parliamentary Assembly, and the Congress of the Council of Europe also use German and Italian for some of their work.

History

Plaque commemorating the first session of the Council of Europe Assembly at Strasbourg University

Founding

In a speech in 1929, French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand floated the idea of an organisation which would gather European nations together in a “federal union” to resolve common problems.[8] But it was Britain’s wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill who first publicly suggested the creation of a “Council of Europe” in a BBC radio broadcast on 21 March 1943,[9] while the Second World War was still raging. In his own words,[10] he tried to “peer through the mists of the future to the end of the war”, and think about how to re-build and maintain peace on a shattered continent. Given that Europe had been at the origin of two world wars, the creation of such a body would be, he suggested, “a stupendous business”. He returned to the idea during a well-known speech at the University of Zurich on 19 September 1946,[11][12] throwing the full weight of his considerable post-war prestige behind it. But there were many other statesmen and politicians across the continent, many of them members of the European Movement, who were quietly working towards the creation of the council. Some regarded it as a guarantee that the horrors of war could never again be visited on the continent, others came to see it as a “club of democracies”, built around a set of common values that could stand as a bulwark against totalitarian states belonging to the Eastern Bloc. Others again saw it as a nascent “United States of Europe”, the resonant phrase that Churchill had reached for at Zurich in 1946.Session of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly in the former House of Europe in Strasbourg in 1967. Willy Brandt, German Minister for Foreign Affairs, is speaking.

The future structure of the Council of Europe was discussed at the Congress of Europe which brought together several hundred leading politicians, government representatives and members of civil society in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1948. There were two competing schools of thought: some favoured a classical international organisation with representatives of governments, while others preferred a political forum with parliamentarians. Both approaches were finally combined through the creation of a Committee of Ministers (in which governments were represented) and a Consultative Assembly (in which parliaments were represented), the two main bodies mentioned in the Statute of the Council of Europe. This dual intergovernmental and inter-parliamentary structure was later copied for the European Communities, NATO and OSCE.

The Council of Europe was signed into existence on 5 May 1949 by the Treaty of London, the organisation’s founding Statute which set out the three basic values that should guide its work: democracy, human rights and the rule of law. It was signed in London on that day by ten states: Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, though Turkey and Greece joined three months later. On 10 August 1949, 100 members of the council’s Consultative Assembly, parliamentarians drawn from the twelve member nations, met in Strasbourg for its first plenary session, held over 18 sittings and lasting nearly a month. They debated how to reconcile and reconstruct a continent still reeling from war, yet already facing a new East–West divide, launched the concept of a trans-national court to protect the basic human rights of every citizen, and took the first steps in a process that would eventually lead to the creation of the European Union.

In August 1949, Paul-Henri Spaak resigned as Belgium’s Foreign Minister in order to be elected as the first President of the Assembly. Behind the scenes, he too had been quietly working towards the creation of the council, and played a key role in steering its early work. However, in December 1951, after nearly three years in the role, Spaak resigned in disappointment after the Assembly rejected proposals for a “European political authority”.[13] Convinced that the Council of Europe was never going to be in a position to achieve his long-term goal of a unified Europe,[14] he soon tried again in a new and more promising format, based this time on economic integration, becoming one of the founders of the European Union.[15]

Early years

There was huge enthusiasm for the Council of Europe in its early years, as its pioneers set about drafting what was to become the European Convention on Human Rights, a charter of individual rights which – it was hoped – no member government could ever again violate. They drew, in part, on the tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed only a few months earlier in Paris. But crucially, where the Universal Declaration was essentially aspirational, the European Convention from the beginning featured an enforcement mechanism – an international Court – which was to adjudicate on alleged violations of its articles and hold governments to account, a dramatic leap forward for international justice. Today, this is the European Court of Human Rights, whose rulings are binding on 47 European nations, the most far-reaching system of international justice anywhere in the world.

One of the council’s first acts was to welcome West Germany into its fold on 2 May 1951,[16] setting a pattern of post-war reconciliation that was to become a hallmark of the council, and beginning a long process of “enlargement” which was to see the organisation grow from its original ten founding member states to the 47 nations that make up the Council of Europe today.[17] Iceland had already joined in 1950, followed in 1956 by Austria, Cyprus in 1961, Switzerland in 1963 and Malta in 1965.

Historic speeches at the Council of Europe

Winston Churchill‘s inaugural speech of the Council of Europe in The Hague

In 2018, an archive of all speeches made to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe by heads of state or government since the Council of Europe’s creation in 1949 appeared online, the fruit of a two-year project entitled “Voices of Europe”.[18] At the time of its launch,[19] the archive comprised 263 speeches delivered over a 70-year period by some 216 Presidents, Prime Ministers, monarchs and religious leaders from 45 countries – though it continues to expand, as new speeches are added every few months.

Some very early speeches by individuals considered to be “founding figures” of the European institutions, even if they were not heads of state or government at the time, are also included (such as Sir Winston Churchill or Robert Schuman). Addresses by eight monarchs appear in the list (such as King Juan Carlos I of Spain, King Albert II of Belgium and Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg) as well as the speeches given by religious figures (such as Pope John Paul II, and Pope Francis) and several leaders from countries in the Middle East and North Africa (such as Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat, Hosni Mubarak, Léopold Sédar Senghor or King Hussein of Jordan).

The full text of the speeches is given in both English and French, regardless of the original language used. The archive is searchable by country, by name, and chronologically.[20]

Aims and achievement

Article 1(a) of the Statute states that “The aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles which are their common heritage and facilitating their economic and social progress.”[21] Membership is open to all European states who seek harmony, cooperation, good governance and human rights, accepting the principle of the rule of law and are able and willing to guarantee democracy, fundamental human rights and freedoms.

Whereas the member states of the European Union transfer part of their national legislative and executive powers to the European Commission and the European Parliament, Council of Europe member states maintain their sovereignty but commit themselves through conventions/treaties (international law) and co-operate on the basis of common values and common political decisions. Those conventions and decisions are developed by the member states working together at the Council of Europe. Both organisations function as concentric circles around the common foundations for European co-operation and harmony, with the Council of Europe being the geographically wider circle. The European Union could be seen as the smaller circle with a much higher level of integration through the transfer of powers from the national to the EU level. “The Council of Europe and the European Union: different roles, shared values.”[22] Council of Europe conventions/treaties are also open for signature to non-member states, thus facilitating equal co-operation with countries outside Europe.

The Council of Europe’s most famous achievement is the European Convention on Human Rights, which was adopted in 1950 following a report by the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, and followed on from the United Nations ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights‘ (UDHR).[23] The Convention created the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The Court supervises compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights and thus functions as the highest European court. It is to this court that Europeans can bring cases if they believe that a member country has violated their fundamental rights and freedoms.

The various activities and achievements of the Council of Europe can be found in detail on its official website. The Council of Europe works in the following areas:

  • Support for intercultural integration through the Intercultural Cities (ICC) program. This program offers information and advice for local authorities on the integration of minorities and the prevention of discrimination.[32]

Institutions

The institutions of the Council of Europe are:

  • The Secretary General, who is elected for a term of five years by the Parliamentary Assembly and heads the Secretariat of the Council of Europe. Thorbjørn Jagland, the former Prime Minister of Norway, was elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe on 29 September 2009.[33] In June 2014, he became the first Secretary General to be re-elected, commencing his second term in office on 1 October 2014.[34]
  • The Committee of Ministers, comprising the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of all 47 member states who are represented by their Permanent Representatives and Ambassadors accredited to the Council of Europe. Committee of Ministers’ presidencies are held in alphabetical order for six months following the English alphabet: Turkey 11/2010-05/2011, Ukraine 05/2011-11/2011, the United Kingdom 11/2011-05/2012, Albania 05/2012-11/2012, Andorra 11/2012-05/2013, Armenia 05/2013-11/2013, Austria 11/2013-05/2014, and so on.[35]

Council’s Parliamentary Assemblyhemicycle

  • The Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), which comprises national parliamentarians from all member states.[36] Adopting resolutions and recommendations to governments, the Assembly holds a dialogue with its governmental counterpart, the Committee of Ministers, and is often regarded as the “motor” of the organisation. The national parliamentary delegations to the Assembly must reflect the political spectrum of their national parliament, i.e. comprise government and opposition parties. The Assembly appoints members as rapporteurs with the mandate to prepare parliamentary reports on specific subjects. The British MP Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe was rapporteur for the drafting of the European Convention on Human Rights. Dick Marty‘s reports on secret CIA detentions and rendition flights in Europe became quite famous in 2006 and 2007. Other Assembly reports were instrumental in, for example, the abolition of the death penalty in Europe, highlighting the political and human rights situation in Chechnya, identifying who was responsible for disappeared persons in Belarus, chronicling threats to freedom of expression in the media and many other subjects.
  • The Congress of the Council of Europe (Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe), which was created in 1994 and comprises political representatives from local and regional authorities in all member states. The most influential instruments of the Council of Europe in this field are the European Charter of Local Self-Government of 1985 and the European Outline Convention on Transfrontier Co-operation between Territorial Communities or Authorities of 1980.[37][38]
  • The European Court of Human Rights, created under the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950, is composed of a judge from each member state elected for a single, non-renewable term of nine years by the Parliamentary Assembly and is headed by the elected President of the Court. The current President of the Court is Guido Raimondi from Italy. Under the recent Protocol No. 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights, the Court’s case-processing was reformed and streamlined. Ratification of Protocol No. 14 was delayed by Russia for a number of years, but won support to be passed in January 2010.[39]
  • The Commissioner for Human Rights is elected by the Parliamentary Assembly for a non-renewable term of six years since the creation of this position in 1999. Since April 2018, this position has been held by Dunja Mijatović from Bosnia and Herzegovina.[40]
  • The Conference of INGOs.[41] NGOs can participate in the INGOs Conference of the Council of Europe. Since the [Resolution (2003)8] adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 19 November 2003, they are given a “participatory status”.[42]
  • The Joint Council on Youth of the Council of Europe.[43] The European Steering Committee (CDEJ) on Youth and the Advisory Council on Youth (CCJ) of the Council of Europe form together the Joint Council on Youth (CMJ). The CDEJ brings together representatives of ministries or bodies responsible for youth matters from the 50 States Parties to the European Cultural Convention. The CDEJ fosters co-operation between governments in the youth sector and provides a framework for comparing national youth policies, exchanging best practices and drafting standard-setting texts. The Advisory Council on Youth comprises 30 representatives of non-governmental youth organisations and networks. It provides opinions and input from youth NGOs on all youth sector activities and ensures that young people are involved in the council’s other activities.
  • Information Offices of the Council of Europe in many member states.

European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines.

The CoE system also includes a number of semi-autonomous structures known as “Partial Agreements“, some of which are also open to non-member states:

Headquarters and buildings

See also: European Institutions in StrasbourgAerial shot of the Palais de l’Europe in StrasbourgCouncil of Europe’s Agora building

The seat of the Council of Europe is in Strasbourg, France. First meetings were held in Strasbourg’s University Palace in 1949, but the Council of Europe soon moved into its own buildings. The Council of Europe’s eight main buildings are situated in the Quartier européen, an area in the northeast of Strasbourg spread over the three districts of Le Wacken, La Robertsau and Quartier de l’Orangerie, where are also located the four buildings of the seat of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, the Arte headquarters and the seat of the International Institute of Human Rights.

Building in the area started in 1949 with the predecessor of the Palais de l’Europe, the House of Europe (demolished in 1977), and came to a provisional end in 2007 with the opening of the New General Office Building, later named “Agora”, in 2008.[45] The Palais de l’Europe (Palace of Europe) and the Art Nouveau Villa Schutzenberger (seat of the European Audiovisual Observatory) are in the Orangerie district, and the European Court of Human Rights, the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and the Agora Building are in the Robertsau district. The Agora building has been voted “best international business center real estate project of 2007” on 13 March 2008, at the MIPIM 2008.[46] The European Youth Centre is located in the Wacken district.

Besides its headquarters in Strasbourg, the Council of Europe is also present in other cities and countries. The Council of Europe Development Bank has its seat in Paris, the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe is established in Lisbon, Portugal, and the Centre for Modern Languages is in Graz, Austria. There are European Youth Centres in Budapest, Hungary, and in Strasbourg. The European Wergeland Centre, a new Resource Centre on education for intercultural dialogue, human rights and democratic citizenship, operated in cooperation with the Norwegian Government, opened in Oslo, Norway, in February 2009.[47]

The Council of Europe has offices in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, and Ukraine; information offices in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine; and a projects office in Turkey. All these offices are establishments of the Council of Europe and they share its juridical personality with privileges and immunities.

Member states, observers, partners

Main article: Member states of the Council of Europe

Eligibility

There are two main criteria for membership: geographic (Article 4 of the Council of Europe Statute specifies that membership is open to any “European” State) and political (Article 3 of the Statute states applying for membership must accept democratic values—”Every member of the Council of Europe must accept the principles of the rule of law and the enjoyment by all persons within its jurisdiction of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and collaborate sincerely and effectively in the realisation of the aim of the Council as specified in Chapter I”).[48][49]

Since the definition of “Europe” is not defined in international law, the definition of “Europe” has been a question that has recurred during the CoE’s history. Turkey was admitted in 1950, although it is a transcontinental state that lies mostly in Asia, with a smaller portion in Europe.[49] In 1994, the Parliamentary Assembly adopted Recommendation 1247, which said that admission to the CoE should be “in principle open only to states whose national territory lies wholly or partly in Europe”; later, however, the Assembly extended eligibility to apply and be admitted to Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.[49]

Member states and observers

The Council of Europe was founded on 5 May 1949 by Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.[50] Greece joined three months later.[51][52] In 1950, Iceland[53][54] and Turkey joined.[55][56] West Germany and Saarland Protectorate joined the Council of Europe as associate members in 1950. West Germany became a full member in 1951, and the Saar withdrew its application after it joined West Germany following the 1955 Saar Statute referendum.[57][58] Joining later were Austria (1956), Cyprus (1961), Switzerland (1963), Malta (1965), and Portugal (1976).[49] Spain joined in 1977, two years after the death of its dictator Francisco Franco and the Spanish transition to democracy.[59] Next to join were Liechtenstein (1978), San Marino (1988) and Finland (1989).[49] After the fall of Communism with the Revolutions of 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the post-Soviet states in Europe that began to democratization joined Hungary (1990), Poland (1991), Bulgaria (1992), Estonia (1993), Lithuania (1993), Slovenia (1993), the Czech Republic (1993), the Slovak Republic (1993), Romania (1993), Latvia (1995), Moldova (1995), Albania (1995), Ukraine (1995), the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (1995) (later renamed North Macedonia), the Russian Federation (1996, expelled 2022), Croatia (1996), Georgia (1999), Armenia (2001), Azerbaijan (2001), Bosnia and Herzegovina (2002) and Serbia and Montenegro (later Serbia) (2003).[49] Also joining were the small Western European nations of Andorra (1994) and Monaco (2004).[49] The Council now has 46 member states, with Montenegro (2007) being the latest to join.[60]

Although most Council members are predominantly Christian in heritage, there are three Muslim-majority member states: Turkey, Albania, and Azerbaijan.[49]

The CoE has granted some countries a status that allows them to participate in CoE activities without being full members. There are three types of nonmember status: associate member, special guest and observer.[49] Associate member status is no longer used.[49] “Special guest” status was used as a transitional status for post-Soviet countries that wished to join the Council after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and is no long commonly used.[49] “Observer” status is for non-Europe nations who accept democracy, rule of law, and human rights, and wish to participate in Council initiatives.[49] The United States became an observer state in 1995.[61] Currently, Canada, the Holy See, Japan, Mexico, and the United States are observer states, while Israel is an observer to the Parliamentary Assembly.[60]

Withdrawal, suspension, and expulsion

Further information: Withdrawal from the Council of Europe

The Statute of the Council of Europe provides for the voluntary suspension, involuntary suspension, and exclusion of members.[62] Article 8 of the Statute provides that any member who has “seriously violated” Article 3 may be suspended from its rights of representation, and that the Committee of Ministers may request that such a member withdraw from the Council under Article 7. (The Statute does not define the “serious violation” phrase.[62] Under Article 8 of the Statute, if a member state fails to withdraw upon request, the Committee may terminate its membership, in consultation with the Parliamentary Assembly.[62]

The Council moved to suspended Greece in 1967, after a military coup d’etat, and the Greek junta withdrew from the CoE.[62] Greece was readmitted to the council in 1974.[63]

Suspension and withdrawal of Russia

Main article: Russia in the Council of Europe

Russia became a member of the Council of Europe in 1996. In 2014, after Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported separatists in eastern Ukraine, precipitating a bloody conflict, the Council stripped Russia of its voting rights in the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly.[64] In response, Russia began to boycott the Assembly in 2016, and beginning in 2017 refused to pay its annual membership dues of 32.6 million euros (US$37.1 million) to the Council[64][65] placing the institution under financial strain.[66]

Russia claimed that its suspension by the council was unfair, and demanded the restoration of voting rights.[67] Russia had threatened to withdraw from the Council unless its voting rights were restored in time for the election of a new secretary general.[64] European Council secretary-general Thorbjørn Jagland organized a special committee to find a compromise with Russia in early 2018, a move that was criticized as giving in to alleged Russian pressure by Council members and academic observers, especially if voting sanctions were lifted.[66][67][68] In June 2019, the Council voted (on a 118–62 vote, with 10 abstentions) to restore Russia’s voting rights in the council.[64][69] Opponents of lifting the suspension included Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries, such as Poland and the Baltic states, who argued that readmission amounted to normalizing Russia’s malign activity.[64] Supporters of restoring Russia’s council rights included France and Germany,[70] which argued that a Russian withdrawal from the Council would be harmful because it would deprive Russian citizens of their ability to initiate cases in the European Court of Human Rights.[64]

On 3 March 2022, after Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, the Council suspended Russia for violations of the Council’s Statute and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The suspension blocked Russia from participation in the Council’s ministerial council, parliamentary assembly, and Council of the Baltic Sea States, but still left Russia obligated to follow the ECHR.[70][71][72] On 15 March 2022, Russia initiated a withdrawal procedure from the Council, delivering its formal desire to withdraw on 31 December 2022, and announced its intent to denounce the ECHR. However, on the same day, the Council’s Committee of Ministers decided Russia’s membership in the Council would be immediately terminated.[73] After quitting the Council of Europe, Russia’s former president (2008-2012) and prime minister (2012-2020) Dmitry Medvedev endorsed restoring death penalty in Russia.[74][75]

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Europe

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