The Council of Europe (45 member states representing 800 million citizens) met in plenary session in its Strasbourg headquarters from 21 to 25 June. Numerous questions were on the order of the day, beginning with the appointment of the new general Secretary: the assembly elected the Englishman Terry Davis, whose task it will be to coordinate the activities of the Council of Europe. The Assembly also dealt with the procedures of “control” regarding Turkey, and the measures to be adopted “against the domestic slavery of au pairs and wives acquired by correspondence”. Particularly lively was the debate on the “contribution of the Council of Europe to the solution of the conflict in Iraq”. The Council’s information service reports that “Kjell Magne Bondevik, prime minister of Norway, and Robert Kocharian, president of Armenia, addressed the Assembly”. For his part, Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, “intervened during the debate on ‘The euro and the enlarged Europe'”. As usual, the Council especially focused its attention on issues relating to the protection of human rights, and the integration of the continent at the levels of culture and identity: an especially important question in the light of recent EU enlargement to Eastern and Southern Europe.
