A Brief History of the
The Europe that awoke in the days following the
Liberation was in a sorry state, torn apart by five years of war. States were
determined to build up their shattered economies, recover their influence and,
above all, ensure that such a tragedy could never happen again. Winston
Churchill was the first to point to the solution, in his speech of 19 September
1946 in Zurich. According to him, what was needed was "a remedy which, as
if by miracle, would transform the whole scene and in a few years make all
Europe as free and happy as Switzerland is today. We must build a kind of
United States of Europe".
Movements
of various persuasions, but all dedicated to European unity, were springing up
everywhere at the time. All these organisations were to combine to form the
International Committee of the Movements for European Unity. Its first act was
to organise the Hague Congress, on 7 May 1948, remembered as "The Congress
of Europe".
A thousand
delegates at The Hague
More than a thousand delegates from some twenty
countries, together with a large number of observers, among them political and
religious figures, academics, writers and journalists, attended the Congress.
Its purpose was to demonstrate the breadth of the movements in favour of
European unification, and to determine the objectives which must be met in
order to achieve such a union.
A
series of resolutions was adopted at the end of the Congress, calling, amongst
other things, for the creation of an economic and political union to guarantee
security, economic independence and social progress, the establishment of a
consultative assembly elected by national parliaments, the drafting of a
European charter of human rights and the setting up of a court to enforce its decisions.
All the themes around which Europe was to be built were already sketched out in
this initial project. The Congress also revealed the divergences which were
soon to divide unconditional supporters of a European federation (France and
Belgium) from those who favoured simple inter-governmental co-operation, such
as Great Britain, Ireland and the Scandinavian countries.
Compromise
On the international scene, the sharp East-West
tensions marked by the Prague coup and the Berlin blockade were to impart a
sense of urgency to the need to take action and devote serious thought to a
genuine inter-state association. Two months after the Congress of Europe,
Georges Bidault, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, issued an invitation
to his Brussels Treaty partners, the United Kingdom and the Benelux countries,
and to all those who wished to give substance to The Hague proposals. Robert
Schuman, who replaced him a few days later, confirmed the invitation. France,
supported by Belgium, in the person of its Prime Minister Paul Henri Spaak,
called for the creation of a European Assembly, with wide-ranging powers,
composed of members of parliament from the various states and deciding by a
majority vote. This plan, assigning a fundamental role to the Assembly seemed quite
revolutionary in an international order hitherto the exclusive preserve of
governments. But Great Britain, which favoured a form of intergovernmental
co-operation in which the Assembly would have a purely consultative function,
rejected this approach.
It
only softened its stance after lengthy negotiations. Finally, on 27 and 28
January 1949 the five ministers for foreign affairs of the Brussels Treaty
countries, meeting in the Belgian capital, reached a compromise: a Council of
Europe consisting of a ministerial committee, to meet in private; and a
consultative body, to meet in public. In order to satisfy the supporters of
co-operation the Assembly was purely consultative in nature, with
decision-making powers vested in the Committee of Ministers. In order to meet
the demands of those partisans of a Europe-wide federation, members of the
Assembly were independent of their governments, with full voting freedom. The
United Kingdom demanded that they be appointed by their governments. This
important aspect of the compromise was soon to be reviewed and, from 1951
onwards, parliaments alone were to choose their representatives.
"Greater"
and "Smaller" Europe
On 5 May 1949, in St James's Palace, London, the treaty
constituting the Statute of the Council of Europe was signed by ten countries:
Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom,
accompanied by Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The Council of
Europe was now able to start work. Its first sessions were held in Strasbourg,
which was to become its permanent seat. In the initial flush of enthusiasm, the
first major convention was drawn up: the European Convention on Human Rights,
signed in Rome on 4 November 1950 and coming into force on 3 September 1953.
The
new organisation satisfied a very wide range of public opinion, which saw in it
an instrument through which the various political tendencies, and the essential
aspirations of the peoples of Europe, could be expressed. This was indeed the
purpose for which it was founded, as clearly stated in Chapter I of its
Statute: "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."
In
order to achieve its objectives, certain means were made available to the
Council and were listed in the Statute, which specified that: "This aim
shall be pursued through the organs of the Council by discussion of questions
of common concern and by agreements and common action in economic, social,
cultural, scientific, legal and administrative matters and in the maintenance
and further realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms." In
accordance with the compromise reached, the Statute made no mention of drawing
up a constitution, or of pooling national sovereignty, in order to achieve the
"economic and political union" called for by The Hague delegates.
Consequently,
the need was soon felt to set up separate bodies to address the urgent
questions arising on the political and economic fronts. Shortly after the
accession of the Federal Republic of Germany, Robert Schuman approached all the
Council of Europe countries with a proposal for a European Coal and Steel Community,
to be provided with very different political and budgetary means.
The
six countries most attached to the ideal of integration - Belgium, France,
Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the Federal Republic of Germany -
joined, and on 9 May 1951 signed the very first Community treaty. Strengthened
by the experience and commitment which had brought the "Greater
Europe" into existence, the "Smaller Europe" was now making its
own "leap into the unknown" of European construction.
Early
developments
In the years between 1949 and 1970, eight new countries
joined the founder members: in order of accession Greece, Iceland, Turkey,
Germany, Austria, Cyprus, Switzerland and Malta. In this period, the
organisation gradually developed its structure and its major institutions.
Thus, the first public hearing of the European Court of Human Rights took place
in 1960. These years also saw the introduction of the first specialized
ministerial conferences; by the early 1970s they had been extended to cover a
wide range of areas. The first, in 1959, brought together European ministers
responsible for social and family affairs. On 18 October 1961, the European
Social Charter was signed in Rome: a text which the Council sees as the
counterpart of the European Convention on Human Rights in the social domain.
The
Charter came into force on 26 February 1965. It sets out 19 rights, including
the right to strike and the right to social protection, but does not have such
effective machinery as the Human Rights Convention. Nevertheless, it is
gradually developing into a common body of social rights that apply right
across Europe.
The
same era saw the institution of the Council for Cultural Co-operation in 1961,
which non-Council of Europe member states were allowed to join from the outset.
One example was Finland, which only joined the Council itself 28 years later.
Similarly, the European Pharmacopoeia was founded in 1964 and the European
Youth Centre in 1967.
Crises
strengthen democracy
The Council of Europe's first major political crisis
came in 1967 when the Greek colonels overthrew the legally elected government
and installed an authoritarian regime which openly contravened the democratic
principles defended by the organisation. On 12 December 1969, just a few hours
before a decision would have been taken to exclude Greece, the colonels' regime
anticipated matters by denouncing the European Convention on Human Rights and
withdrawing from the Council of Europe. It did not return until five years
later, on 28 November 1974 after the fall of the dictatorship and the
restoration of democracy. In the meantime, the Cypriot crisis, which broke out
in the summer of 1974 and culminated in the partitioning of the island after
Turkish military intervention, represented a fairly negative experience for the
Council of Europe, whose discreet efforts to broker a solution, alongside those
of the United Nations' Secretary General, were not crowned with success.
A
new crisis arose in 1981 when the Parliamentary Assembly withdrew the Turkish
parliamentary delegation's right to their seats in response to the military
coup d'état a few weeks earlier. The Turkish delegation only resumed its
place in 1984 after the holding of free elections.
Greece's
return marked the disappearance of the last authoritarian regime in western
Europe. Portugal had made its Council of Europe debut on 22 September 1976, two
years after its peaceful revolution of April 1974, bringing an end to 48 years
of Salazarist dictatorship, while the death of General Franco in 1975 eventually
led to Spain's accession on 24 November 1977.
The
Council of Europe's permanent role on the European political and institutional
scene was sealed on 28 January 1977 with its move from its provisional premises
to the Palais de l'Europe, designed by the French architect Bernard.
Liechtenstein's
accession on 23 November 1978, San Marino's on 16 November 1988 and Finland's
on 5 May 1989 more or less completed the absorption of west European states
while the Council of Europe was already laying the foundations for a
rapprochement with the countries of central and eastern Europe.
A
further, critical stage in the Council of Europe's life started in 1985 with
the first movements to introduce democracy to central and eastern Europe. In
January of that year Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Chairman of the Committee of
Ministers, invited his colleagues to take part in an extraordinary session
devoted entirely to East-West relations. This process of reflection, that took
account of the trend emerging in Eastern Europe - in Romania and Poland, and in
the Soviet Union, where Mikhail Gorbachov had just come to power - gave rise to
the notion of a European cultural identity, which became the subject of a
resolution in April 1985. Convinced that unity in diversity was the basis of the
wealth of Europe's heritage, the Council of Europe noted that their common
tradition and European identity did not stop at the boundaries between the
various political systems; it stressed, in the light of the CSCE Final Act, the
advantage of consolidating cultural co-operation as a means of promoting a
lasting understanding between peoples and between governments. The Eastern
European countries grasped this outstretched hand with enthusiasm.
Rapprochement had
at last become not only possible but necessary. The Council of Europe was
naturally delighted by the process of democratisation set in motion in the
East, together with the economic and social reforms introduced in the name of
perestroika. It was the Council's role and purpose to support this trend, to
help make it irreversible, and to fulfil the expectations of the countries
calling upon it for assistance. Not of course by renouncing its principles but,
on the contrary, by making them a precondition for any form of co-operation.
An
antechamber
This became the Council of Europe's guiding principle,
as reflected in the Committee of Ministers' change of course set out in its
declaration of 5 May 1989. The new direction represented both an achievement
and a first step, and was the outcome of a number of exchanges (the Secretary
General's visit to Hungary, then Poland; the visits by the President of the
Parliamentary Assembly to Budapest and Warsaw, and the visits to Strasbourg of
delegations and experts from the USSR and other East European countries). This
new departure gave momentum to a process that was to continue to accelerate,
exceeding even the most optimistic expectations.
Eastern
European countries were now knocking impatiently at the door of the Council of
Europe, that guardian of human rights; the organisation became a kind of
antechamber for negotiating the transition from dictatorship and democracy, as
had previously been the case with Portugal and Spain.
It
is no coincidence that the first address by a Soviet leader to an assembly of
Western European parliamentarians should have taken place at the Council of
Europe. Mikhail Gorbachov chose this particular chamber - on 6 July 1989 - to
put forward a new disarmament proposal (unilateral reduction of short-range
nuclear missiles), to promote the idea of a Common European Home (non-use of
force, renunciation of the Brezhnev doctrine and maintenance of socialism), and
to discuss human rights (albeit without referring to the European Convention!).
The
Council of Europe started to open its gates very carefully. In 1989, the
Parliamentary Assembly established the very selective special guest status for
the national assemblies of countries willing to apply the Helsinki final act
and the United Nations Covenant on Human Rights. The status was immediately granted
to the assemblies of Hungary, Poland, USSR and Yugoslavia and opened the way to
the full accession of the former Soviet bloc countries.
Four
months after Mikhail Gorbachov's address the Berlin wall fall on 9 September
1989. This provided the opportunity for the Council of Europe's Secretary
General to state, on 23 November, that the Council was the only organisation
capable of encompassing all the countries of Europe, once they had adopted
democratic rules. This marked the start of the organisation's new political
role.
From the
fall of the Berlin wall to the Vienna summit
Referring to his country's accession to the Council of
Europe on 6 November 1990, the Hungarian Minister for Foreign Affairs said that
the event marked the first step in the re-establishment of the unity of the
continent.
Special
programmes were rapidly introduced to meet the most pressing needs and allow
the new European partners, both before and after their accession, to draw on a
shared fund of knowledge and experience to enable them to complete their
democratic transition. These programmes were dubbed Demosthenes, Themis and
Lode and focused on the key areas of reform: how to design new constitutions,
bring domestic legislation into line with the European Convention on Human
Rights, reorganise the civil service, establish an independent judiciary and an
independent media, encourage local democracy. In other words, how to become a
full member of the European democratic and legal community.
On
4 May 1992, François Mitterrand addressed the Parliamentary Assembly in
a session largely devoted to integrating the countries of central and eastern
Europe in the building of a new Europe. Why, he asked, should all the heads of
state and government of the Council of Europe's member countries not meet every
two years, alternating with meetings of the CSCE? The proposal was adopted at
least in part and Austria, which chaired the Committee of Ministers between May
and November 1993, offered to organise and host the summit.
The
summit was held in Vienna on 8 and 9 October 1993 and confirmed and extended
the policy of opening up and enlargement. It also identified three priorities,
starting with the reforme of the European Convention on Human Rights machinery
to make it more expeditious and effective. This is the subject of the
Convention's Protocol no 11. The Vienna summit also laid great emphasis on the
protection of national minorities, which was to lead to the adoption of a
framework convention less than two years later, and combating intolerance.
Thus
with its new-found role of offering a home to all the countries of Europe
willing to opt for democracy, thereby establishing a continent-wide democratic
security area, the Council of Europe has used the years since Vienna to develop
and refine the undertakings which any applicant country for membership must be
willing to accept.
The
Council of Europe in an enlarged Europe
The arrival of the Russian Federation in February 1996
meant that the institution had finally become fully pan-European. Henceforth, more
than 700 million citizens would be concerned in building the new Europe. The
Council's activities are now having to adapt to an environment that is not only
wider and more diverse but also more complex and less stable. This is changing
the nature of its co-operation programmes.
Support
and monitoring activities are being strengthened. More attention is being paid
to what happens on the ground, for example via confidence measures or campaigns
to combat intolerance. New priorities are emerging such as migration,
corruption, the right to be granted nationality, social exclusion and
minorities. The dual machinery for protecting human rights will be replaced on
1 Novembre 1998 by a single Court, housed in the Human Rights Building designed
by the British architect Richard Rogers and inaugurated in June 1995.
At
the same time several other European or North Atlantic institutions have been
increasing their co-operation with the countries of central and eastern Europe,
offering the prospect of closer integration. The work under the auspices of the
intergovernmental conference of the European Union and NATO summit held in
Madrid, show that European co-operation will continue to develop.
As
it approaches its fiftieth anniversary, the Council of Europe, with its 41 members,
will also be required to clarify how it sees its future role as a focus for
democratic security and the proponent of a European model of society. A second
summit was held for this purpose on 10 and 11 October 1997. The Strasbourg
Summit, held at the Council of Europe headquarters and hosted by the French
Presidency, gave the 40 Heads of State and Government an opportunity to assess
the positive contribution which the Council had made to stability in Europe by
admitting new countries, running programmes to help them make the transition to
democracy and monitoring all its members' compliance with their obligations.
The Summit adopted a Final Declaration and an Action Plan, fixing the
Organisation's priorities in the years ahead, and gave reform of its structures
the green light.
How the Council of Europe works
The
Council of Europe comprises:
·
a decision making body:
the Committee of Ministers
·
a deliberative body:
the Parliamentary Assembly
·
a voice for local
democracy: the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe
Each
of these three bodies, whose function is briefly described below, has its own
Internet site.
In
exceptional circumstances, political impetus for the organisation may come from
a summit of its member countries' heads of state and government. This occurred
with the Vienna summit in 1993 and the Strasbourg Summit in 1997.
The
various bodies are assisted by an International Secretariat of some 1500
officials from all the member countries. They are headed by a Secretary General
whose is elected by the Parliamentary Assembly for a five year term.
·
The Committee of Ministers
The Committee of Ministers is the decision-making body
of the Council of Europe. It directly represents the governments of the member
States.
It is composed of the Minister for foreign affairs of
each member State. The Minister may be represented by an alternate who is
either a member of government or a senior diplomat.
The chairmanship of the Committee changes with each
six-month session, in the English alphabetical order of the member States.
The Committee meets twice a year at ministerial level, once in April or May and
again in November. The day-to-day work of the Committee is conducted by the Ministers'
Deputies. Each minister appoints a Deputy, who usually also acts as the Permanent
Representative of the member State.
The Ministers' Deputies meet in plenary two to three
times a month. Their decisions have the same authority as the Committee of
Ministers.
The conduct of meetings of the Ministers and their
Deputies is governed by the Statute and rules of procedure.
The Deputies are assisted by a Bureau, Rapporteur
Groups and ad hoc groups.
The Committee of Ministers performs a triple role:
- firstly as the emanation of the governments which
enables them to express on equal terms their national approaches to the problems
confronting Europe's societies;
- secondly as the collective forum where European
responses to these challenges are worked out;
- thirdly as guardian, alongside the Parliamentary
Assembly, of the values for which the Council of Europe exists; as such, it is
vested with a monitoring function in respect of the commitments accepted by the
member States.
The work and activities of the Committee of Ministers
include :
* political dialogue
* interacting with the
Parliamentary Assembly
* interacting with the Congress
of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (CLRAE)
* follow-up to respect of commitments
by member States
* admission of new member States
* concluding conventions and
agreements
* adopting recommendations to member
States
* adopting the budget
* adopting and monitoring the
Intergovernmental Programme of Activities
* implementing cooperation and
assistance programmes for central and eastern Europe
* supervising the execution of
judgments of the European Convention on Human Rights by the member States
* contributing to Conferences
of Specialised Ministers
The
Committee of Ministers is made up of the ministers for foreign affairs of the 41
member states. It meets twice a year in ordinary sessions and may hold special
or informal meetings. Its Chair changes every six months according to the
member countries' alphabetical order.
The
Ministers' Deputies meet at least once a month. They draw up the Council of
Europe's activities programme and adopt its budget, which today amounts to some
1 300 million French francs. It also decides what follow-up should be
given to proposals of the Parliamentary Assembly, the Congress of Local and
Regional Authorities and the specialist ministerial conferences that the
Council of Europe regularly organises.
·
The Parliamentary
Assembly
The Parliamentary Assembly is the
parliamentary organ of the Council of Europe consisting of a number of
individual representatives from each member State, with a President elected
each year from among them for a maximum period of three sessions. The present
President is Lord Russell-Johnston, a British Liberal Democrat (LDR) member of
the House of Lords.
Whilst in the Committee of Ministers
each member state has one vote, in the Parliamentary Assembly the number of
representatives and consequently of votes is determined by the size of the
country. The biggest number is eighteen, the smallest two. As there are an
equal number of representatives and substitutes, the total number of members of
the Assembly is therefore 582, plus 15 special guests and 15 Observers.
They are appointed to the
Parliamentary Assembly in a manner which is left to be decided by each member
state as long as they are elected within their national or federal Parliament,
or appointed from amongst the members of that parliament. The balance of
political parties within each national delegation must ensure a fair
representation of the political parties or groups in their national
parliaments.
Political groups
In order to develop a non-national
European outlook, the formation of political groups in the Parliamentary
Assembly has been promoted and from 1964 onwards they were granted certain rights
within the Rules of Procedure. At present the Assembly counts five political
groups: the Socialist Group (SOC); the Group of the European People's Party
(EPP/CD); the European Democratic Group (EDG); the Liberal, Democratic and
Reformers Group (LDR) and the Group of the Unified European Left (UEL).
Political Groups have to commit themselves to respect the promotion of the
values of the Council of Europe, notably political pluralism, human rights and
the rule of law. To form a Group, at least twenty members of at least six
different delegations have to decide to do so. Members of the Assembly are
entirely free to choose the Group they wish to join. Before deciding they can
attend meetings of one or several groups and should not be bound by their national
party label but choose the group which best suits their political affinities.
The President of the Assembly and the Leaders of the Groups form the Ad hoc
Committee of Chairpersons of Political Groups.
The Bureau
The President, eighteen
Vice-Presidents and the Chairpersons of the political groups or their
representatives make up the Bureau of the Assembly. The big countries have a
permanent seat in the Bureau; the smaller countries take turns. The duties of
the Bureau are manifold: preparation of the Assembly's agenda, reference of
documents to committees, arrangement of day-to-day business, relations with
other international bodies, authorisations for meetings by Assembly committees,
etc.
The Standing Committee
The Standing Committee consists of the
Bureau, the Chairpersons of national delegations and the Chairpersons of the
general committees. It is generally convened at least twice a year and its
major task is to act on behalf of the Assembly when the latter is not in
session. Each year one of the Standing Committee meetings, together with a
number of other committees, takes place normally in one of the member states.
The Joint Committee
The Joint Committee is the forum set
up to co-ordinate the activities of, and maintain good relations between, the
Committee of Ministers and the Assembly.
It is composed of a representative of
each member Government and a corresponding number of representatives of the
Assembly (the members of the Bureau and one representative of each
parliamentary delegation of member States not represented on the Bureau).
The Secretariat of the
Assembly
The secretariat of the Assembly is
headed by Mr Bruno Haller, Secretary General of the Assembly who is elected by
it for a period of five years.
Its
staff is divided into the Private Office of the President, the Secretariat of
the Bureau and the Joint Committee, the Table Office and Inter-parliamentary
Relations, the Administration and Finance Department and the Political and
Legal Affairs Department including a number of operational Divisions to cover
the work of the committees.
The
Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly is made up of 286 representatives
and the same number of substitutes from the parliaments of the member states.
Each delegation's composition reflects that of its parliament of origin.
The
Parliamentary Assembly hold four plenary sessions a year. Its debates on a wide
range of social issues and its recommendations to the Committee of Ministers
have been at the root of many of the Council of Europe's achievements.
The
Parliamentary Assembly has instituted a special guest status, which has enabled
it to play host to representatives of the parliaments of non-member states in
central and eastern Europe, paving the way to these countries' eventual
accession.
The
Assembly plays a key role in the accession process for new members and in
monitoring compliance with undertakings entered into.
·
The Congress of Local
and Regional Authorities of Europe
The
Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, like the Parliamentary
Assembly, has 286 representatives and 286 substitutes. It is composed of two
chambers, one representing local authorities and the other regions. Its
function is to strengthen democratic institutions at the local level, and in
particular to assist the new democracies.
