Sixty years of history

Human rights, democracy, rule of law: these are the three basic principles that characterise the Council of Europe’s action. The Council works at the continental level with 47 member countries and 5 observers (including the Holy See). It has sixty years of history behind it, having been founded by the Treaty of London on 5 May 1949. The celebrations of the organization’s 60th anniversary began at its headquarters in Strasbourg last week and will continue through 2009, including an official commemorative meeting planned to be held in Madrid on 12 May.The oldest European organization. Following the Second World War, the Council of Europe was the first supranational organization to re-unite ten states of Western Europe, given that the continent was then split into two by the Iron Curtain. The Council’s aim, already formulated at the Congress of The Hague in May 1948, was to restore the basic constituents of democracy, co-existence and peace after the tragedies of the dictatorial regimes and the Second World War. Since then the Council of Europe has developed and consolidated its own institutions. It has given birth to the European Court of Human Rights (which is also based in Strasbourg and is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year) and promoted a wide-ranging jurisprudence for the defence of individual and social rights. The Council of Europe now comprises 47 member states, i.e. the whole of Europe with the exception of Belarus, though it is a candidate country. It cooperates on a permanent basis with the EU, UNO and OSCE. Rights, cultural identity, role of law. The stated objectives of the Council of Europe are various: protecting human rights and pluralist democracy; developing democratic stability in Europe by “supporting political, legislative and constitutional reforms”; “promoting and encouraging awareness of the European cultural identity and its diversity”; and seeking common solutions to social problems, such as “discrimination against minorities, xenophobia, intolerance, bioethics and cloning, terrorism, trafficking of human beings, organized crime and corruption”. The political mandate currently in force for the Council of Europe was defined at the third Summit of heads of state and of government of member countries, held in Warsaw (Poland) in May 2005.Same tasks, changed context. “In the sixty years of its existence, the Council of Europe has helped to reconcile a continent after decades of ideological divide”. To mark the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of London, a joint declaration signed by the organization’s Secretary General Terry Davis, President of the Parliamentary Assembly Lluìs Maria de Puig, and Committee of Ministers Chairman Miguel Angel Moratinos has been issued. The three politicians point out that it is to the Council of Europe that we owe the creation of “a Europe-wide Court in which individuals can seek protection of their human rights”, the abolition of the death penalty in Europe and “an arsenal of more than 200 international treaties to defend and extend the Council of Europe values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law”. The mandate of the organization “has not changed”, “but the circumstances in which we operate has changed dramatically. Technological, social and economic developments have brought about new opportunities, but also new threats to democracy, human rights and the rule of law”. That’s why the Council of Europe is committed to the promotion among its member states of “robust and practical legal cooperation with strict respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms combined with positive measures to promote toleration, dialogue and understanding between people”. How the Palais de l’Europe worksThe executive organs of the organization, with its headquarters in the Palais de l’Europe at Strasbourg, are four: the Committee of Ministers, a decision-making institution, is composed of the foreign ministers of member states or by their permanent representatives in Strasbourg; the Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), defined as the “motor of European cooperation”, represents the national Parliaments; the Congress of local and regional authorities is the mouthpiece of the territorial bodies, to promote a “democracy from the bottom”; and fourthly a Secretariat, headed by a Secretary General, has a permanent staff of some 1,800 bureaucrats from 47 countries. The budget of the Council of Europe, a rather modest one, is around 200 million euros per year. The Council’s official languages are French and English, while German, Italian and Russian are used as working languages. An official celebration of the 60th anniversary will be held in Madrid on 12 May; the meeting will also mark the handover from the outgoing six months’ chairmanship, entrusted to Spain, to Slovenia. Information on the Council of Europe, its calendar of anniversary events and links to the history of the organization, its institutional tasks and recent developments can be found on its website www.coe.int.