Council of Europe

Founded in 1949 the Council of Europe is one of the oldest and the biggest European organizations, which unifies 47 member states and promotion of the main principles of the Human Rights.
The proposal of its creation was made by Winston Churchill, who, in his speech of 19 September 1946 in Zurich, stated that what the Old Continent 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”. The first act in this direction was the organization of the Hague Congress, on 7 May 1948, remembered as “The Congress of Europe”.

The Hague Congress was attended by 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.
The aims of the Congress was to demonstrate the breadth of the movements in favor 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 favored simple inter-governmental co-operation, such as Great Britain, Ireland and the Scandinavian countries.

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 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 organization 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.
In the meanwhile, Robert Schuman made his famous Declaration for the creation of European Coal and Steel Community, whose Treaty was signed in Paris on 18 April 1951 by six countries: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the Federal Republic of Germany: beside the “Greater Europe”, a “Smaller Europe” started a new experience.

From 1949 to 1970, other 8 European countries joined the CoE founder members: Greece, Iceland, Turkey, Germany, Austria, Cyprus, Switzerland and Malta.
In the same period, the organization 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.
In 1961 the Council established the Council for Cultural Co-operation, which non-Council of Europe member states were allowed to join from the outset.

The Council of Europe’s first major political crisis came in 1967 when the Greek colonels installed an authoritarian regime which openly contravened the democratic principles defended by the organization. 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 last dictatorship in Western Europe 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.
On 22 September 1976 Portugal Joined the Council of Europe after 48 years of Salazarist dictatorship, while the death of General Franco in 1975 eventually led to Spain’s accession on 24 November 1977.
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.

In the second half of the Eighties, the Council of Europe was naturally delighted by the process of democratization set in motion in the East, together with the economic and social reforms introduced in the name of perestroika by the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
On 6 July 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev chose the Council of Europe 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).
In the same period, 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.
The fall of the Berlin Wall provided the opportunity for the Council of Europe’s Secretary General to state, on 23 November, that the Council was the only organization capable of encompassing all the countries of Europe, once they had adopted democratic rules.
The historical changes of 80s’ last decade, especially the dismantling of an Iron Curtain marked the start of the organization’s new political role.
The policy of opening up and enlargement was confirmed and extended during the summit held in Vienna on 8 and 9 October 1993. The summit also identified three priorities, starting with the reform 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 CoE system also includes a number of semi-autonomous structures known as “Partial Agreements”, some of which are also open to non-member states: the Council of Europe Development Bank; the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines with its European Pharmacopoeia; the European Audiovisual Observatory; the European Support Fund Eurimages for the co-production and distribution of films; the Pompidou Group - Cooperation Group to Combat Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in Drugs; the European Commission for Democracy through Law, better known as the Venice Commission; the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO); the European and Mediterranean Major Hazards Agreement (EUR-OPA) which is a platform for co-operation between European and Southern Mediterranean countries in the field of major natural and technological disasters; the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport, which is open to accession by states and sport associations; the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe in Lisbon; and the Centre for Modern Languages is in Graz (Austria).
The official languages of the Council of Europe are English and French. The Committee of Ministers, the Parliamentary assembly and the Congress also use German, Italian an Russian for some of their works.

The Committee of Ministers is composed of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of its 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. It is the only institution mandated to act on the organization’s behalf. It is responsible for the member state’s accessions to, and if necessary, expulsion from the regional organization. In consultation with the Assembly, the CM has the authority to admit new members who are “able and willing to fulfill the provisions of Article 3”.

Initially named the “Consultative Assembly”, the Parliamentary Assembly changed the name in 1974. It is the “oldest international pluralist assembly established on the basis of an international treaty”.
It comprises national parliamentarians from all member states and elects its President for a year with the possibility of being re-elected for another year. 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 Secretary General is elected for a term of five years by the Parliamentary Assembly and heads the Secretariat of the Council of Europe.

The Congress of the Council of Europe (Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe) 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.

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 renewable term of six years by the Parliamentary Assembly and is headed by the elected President of the Court. Under the new Protocol No. 14 to the European Convention on Human Rights, the terms of office of judges shall be nine years but non-renewable.

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.

NGOs can participate in the INGO 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”.

Created in May 1951, the Joint Committee coordinates the activities between the Committee of Ministers and Parliamentary Assembly.
Membership of representatives from the CE’s member states, and a corresponding number of representatives from the Assembly.