A Brief History of the Council of Europe
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'йtat 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, Franзois 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
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