Speech by Johannes de Jonge
to the 4th Assembly of the Civic Initiatives

Johannes de Jonge is director of external affairs for the Council of Europe.

I am very happy to be in Belgrade and to present to you the Council of Europe, the oldest European institution set up in 1949, shortly after the Second World War, with the objective to achieve greater unity between its members. In the wake of two World Wars during which Europe had been destroyed and divided, the founding fathers of the Council of Europe wanted to create an organization that would work towards lasting peace and cooperation among all the European countries, in a spirit of understanding and on the basis of shared values of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. These are the Council of Europe’s basic ideals.
 
The Council began in 1949 with ten member countries. In the meantime the Iron Curtain had been erected making it impossible for eastern European countries to join. Since then, however, the Council has gradually expanded. One may distinguish two periods of enlargement. In the first period from 1949 to 1989, the Organization grew gradually from ten to twenty-three member States, all basically western European and Mediterranean countries. The second period, which was marked by a significant breakthrough for the Council of Europe, and indeed for Europe as a whole, started in 1989 when democratic reforms began in a number of central and eastern European countries. Since that year the parliaments of nearly all the countries of central and Eastern Europe received the “special guest status” with the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly. Successively these countries joined the Council of Europe, bringing the total membership to 43 member States, including nineteen former communist countries.

In addition, four countries - the United States of America, Canada, Japan - have obtained observer status whereas the Holy See enjoys a comparable position. So, in fact, within the Council of Europe we have cooperation involving more than fifty countries. At the moment there are four candidate countries: Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Monaco, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. However, the application procedure for Belarus has been frozen since early 1997 because of the undemocratic nature of the country’s regime. The accession procedures concerning Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are well underway. As far as your own country is concerned, we hope that it can join the Council of Europe in the course of 2002.

A country wanting to become a member of the Council of Europe has to comply with the basic standards of the Council of Europe. This is a sine qua non for membership. These standards include the holding of free and fair elections, the adherence to the principle of the rule of law (meaning the law has always the last word in everything), the establishment of an independent judiciary, freedom of expression, freedom of the media, and the protection of national minorities. New member States are also required to accede to a number of European treaties. In fact, there exists a rather wide-ranging conditonality.
 
When we ask “What is Democracy?”, it is very difficult to give a precise answer because democracy is not simply defined by a set of rules or standards. It is also a tradition, a culture embodied within society. The harmonious functioning of a democratic society requires not only the full respect of civil and political rights but also the citizens’ awareness of their own responsibilities. And a democracy is born within each society out of its own history and national traditions. So, there does not exist a precise theoretical or practical definition of democracy, but there does exist a wide consensus on a number of core values that prevail in a democratic society.

These values are defined in a number of international instruments, the most important among which are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights, and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which is the key instrument of the Council of Europe.

The Council of Europe has gradually developed the concept of democracy. At the summit of Heads of States and Governments of the Council of Europe held in Vienna in 1993, the concept of democratic security was first adopted. The summit defined a significant range of security risks that exist within European societies, including serious and massive violations of fundamental freedoms and human rights, discrimination against parts of the population, aggressive forms of nationalism, racism, intolerance, and interethnic tensions and conflicts, as we have witnessed in south eastern Europe. Respect for the Council of Europe’s standards is an important condition for creating democratic security and democratic societies.

The Council of Europe stands for what we call the Greater Europe without dividing lines. A Europe united through peace, democracy, and equal opportunities. After the downfall of the Soviet Union, the Poles, the Hungarians, the Czechs, the Slovaks, and so forth, spoke of “a return to Europe.” From a geographical and historical point of view, they had never left Europe, but they had been excluded by dictators from the community of values marking Europe. So, when we speak of a Greater Europe, we mean the expansion of this community of values to all the countries and peoples of our continent.

What are the main bodies of the Council of Europe?

The supreme body of the Council of Europe, the decision-making body, is the Committee of Ministers. It is composed of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the member States, who meet twice a year. They are represented in Strasbourg by Permanent Representatives (Ambassadors) who can take decisions on their behalf. The Committee of Ministers is assisted by more than a hundred committees of experts responsible for the intergovernmental activities of the Council of Europe in a wide range of fields. These committees consist of government officials, representing different ministries, e.g. the Ministries of Justice, of Social Affairs, of Culture, of Education, and others. They prepare the final decisions to be taken by the Committee of Ministers on all the activities undertaken by the Council of Europe.

The second main body is the Parliamentary Assembly. It is, politically speaking, often regarded as the political driving force of the Council. At the moment, the Assembly is composed of 301 members and 301 substitutes. Both members and substitutes usually participate actively in the work of the Assembly, attending the plenary sessions and meetings of its ten specialised committees.  The difference between a member and a substitute is that the latter can only vote if the member for which he or she is a substitute is not present. In addition to the parliamentarians from the member States, the parliamentary guest delegations from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and the observer delegations from Canada, Israel and Mexico participate in the plenary sessions of the Assembly and the meetings of committees. The committees meet rather frequently, at least once a month to prepare the work of the Assembly sessions. There are committees inter alia on Political Affairs, on Culture and Education, on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, on Social, Family, and Health Affairs, and on the Honouring of obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (the “Monitoring Committee”).

The third body of the Council of Europe is the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, which is composed of elected representatives from local and regional authorities in the member States. The Congress deals with matters that are of particular concern to these entities. A major area of concern is local democracy. In a totalitarian system the central government embodies all the power. But in a democratic society, local and regional governments must have a certain degree of autonomy and independence vis-à-vis the central government. The Congress has developed a number of important international instruments, including the European Charter of Local Self-Government and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The Congress has set up only four committees - an Institutional Committee, a Committee on Culture and Education, a Committee on Sustainable Development, and a Committee on Social Cohesion.

The organs and bodies of the Council of Europe are assisted by a Secretariat, which currently comprises about 1700 persons, most of whom are based in Strasbourg, and some in other cities. The Secretariat is divided into a number of services. Without being exhaustive, I may mention the four operational Directorates General (on legal affairs; on human rights; on social cohesion; on education, culture and heritage, youth and sport). Furthermore there exists a Directorate General of Political Affairs, and a Directorate of Strategic Planning.
 
I would like to say a few things on the kind of cooperation the Council of Europe has developed. In principle the Council of Europe can deal with any matter, with the exception of defence and military matters. The founders of the Council of Europe have excluded this from the Organisation’s competence so as to enable all European countries to join the Organisation regardless of whether or not they belonged to a military block or were neutral. The Council of Europe brings its member States ever closer together through their participation in common activities on an equal footing and through sustaining a culture of concrete and purposeful cooperation across the whole of Europe, thereby helping to overcome divisions and avoiding to create new ones.

The Council of Europe’s work covers a wide field, ranging from human rights - including minority protection, media, equality and the fight against racism - legal cooperation, culture and education, youth, regional and local authorities, public health, social cohesion, to combating organised crime and corruption. Allow me also to mention a few of the Council of Europe’s achievements as illustrations of its work.

The most important achievement is the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950. All member States must sign and ratify this convention which guarantees a significant number of basic rights: e.g. the rights to life, to liberty and security, to freedom of expression, to a fair trial, to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, to property, to found a family, and so forth. In order to take into account new developments in society, the Convention has gradually been up-dated through so-called Protocols. There are now thirteen such Protocols. Protocol No. 6 concerns the Abolition of the Death Penalty and the Council of Europe has begun an action to promote the abolition of the death penalty worldwide. Protocol, No. 12, bans all forms of discrimination, whether it is based on colour, sex, religion or any other ground.

Under the Convention all persons within the jurisdiction of the member States of the Council of Europe can lodge a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if they feel that their rights, as guaranteed by the convention, have been violated. If the Court decides in the person’s favour, the country concerned is obliged to implement the decision of the Court, which may entail an adjustment of its legislation so as to bring it into conformity with the Convention.

There are other important instruments of the Council of Europe, such as the European Social Charter, which is the counterpart of the Human Rights Convention guaranteeing rights pertaining to employment and social cohesion. The European Convention on the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment is an instrument that provides for independent and impartial experts to visit places of detention such as prisons, police stations, psychiatric institutions, to see how detainees are treated. And there is the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, which is a vital instrument for the protection of these minorities in general. Under the Convention an Advisory Committee sees to it that member States comply with the provisions of this instrument.

All in all, the Council of Europe has adopted 185 conventions covering a wide range of concerns of the Council of Europe: human rights, and legal, social, cultural, education and health matters. I may cite the conventions on the Suppression of Terrorism, on Laundering the Proceeds from Crime, the Anti-Doping Convention, the conventions on Bio-ethics and Human Rights, and on Nationality. The latest convention, the one on Cyber-Crime was adopted on 23 November 2001 in Budapest.

In addition to the 185 European Conventions, the Committee of Ministers has adopted more than a thousand Recommendations covering the main areas of activities of the Council of Europe. These instruments are different from Conventions in that they are not binding upon member States. But they have a strong political and moral influence on our countries because firstly, they are adopted by the Committee of Ministers by consensus, secondly, their implementation is regularly reviewed by the Committee of Ministers, and thirdly, they cover important subjects that provoke the interest of politicians, pressure groups, media or NGOs which will exert pressure on their governments if they do not comply with these recommendations.

In addition to the European Conventions and Recommendations, the Council of Europe has created thirteen so-called Partial Agreements, these are bodies in which not necessarily all Council of Europe member States cooperate in a given field. I may mention the Development Bank of the Council of Europe, which has provided loans in recent years at the rate of about € 2 billion a year for the financing of projects, mainly in the social sector. Another Partial Agreement is Eurimages, which is a fund for the co-production and distribution of European cinematographic works. This is important since many countries, especially the smaller ones, do not always have the means to finance the production of films. Another example is the European Commission for Democracy Through Law, also known as the “Venice Commission”, made up of eminent constitutional specialists who can advise member and non-member States alike on constitutional, legislative or administrative issues.
 
GRECO (the Group of States against Corruption) is a new Partial Agreement in which States cooperate to supervise the implementation of the Civil and Criminal Law Conventions against Corruption. The European Centre for Global Interdependence and Solidarity (“The North-South Centre”) based in Lisbon, promotes public awareness of global interdependence and solidarity issues and promotes a dialogue between the peoples of different countries and continents. The underlying morale is that the fate of all countries is intimately bound up with each other.

The Council of Europe has taken a number of specific initiatives of which I would like to single out a few. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), was created following the European Youth Campaign against Racism and Intolerance held in 1995. ECRI works to strengthen legal and political guarantees against all forms of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and related intolerance. It examines the situation on a country by country basis in order to stimulate appropriate action if necessary. The Council of Europe has also appointed a special Co-ordinator of Activities on Roma/Gypsies to implement measures designed to improve the situation of this group of the population. This is a very important activity because there are about 6 million Roma/Gypsies living in Europe - more than the inhabitants of many of our member States. Furthermore, there exist programmes for the promotion of the equality between women and men by eliminating all forms of discrimination, not only in legislation but also in daily life. You will later here about our activities designed to strengthen civil society. Let me finish by saying that the Council of Europe has set up two European Youth Centres, one in Strasbourg and one in Budapest. They are international meeting and training centres where young people come together to address issues of society and formulate policy proposals.

The Council of Europe also provides special assistance and cooperation to the countries of central and eastern Europe. Since 1989, the Council has accepted new member States that at the moment of accession could not always comply with all the conditions of membership, but only with the basic conditions to which I referred at the beginning. Therefore, upon their accession they had to commit themselves - and it will be the same for your country - to fulfil within a certain delay all the conditions of membership that they could not fulfil at the moment of accession. This is usually due to the fact that the adoption of new laws requires often much preparatory work, with or without outside assistance. The Council of Europe has set up cooperation and assistance programme, on the one hand,  to help the new member and applicant States to comply with the conditions of membership, and, on the other, to help them integrate into European structures. In order to coordinate these programmes on the spot, the Council of Europe has opened offices in Sarajevo, Mostar, Tirana, Belgrade, Podgorica, and Pristina. We have now also a presence in Skopje, and we have placed Human Rights and Rule of Law Officers in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Council of Europe cooperates with other international organizations, in particular the United Nations system, and the OSCE. Both the Council of Europe and the OSCE stand for democracy, human rights and the rule of law. However, their mandates and working methods are rather different. The OSCE is basically a conflict resolution and crisis management organisation, while the Council of Europe must guarantee that new conflicts or crises can not break out anymore by incorporating its member States in a permanent cooperation structure based on binding obligations. Of course, the two organisations work closely together, whereby the OSCE often calls on the Council of Europe to provide expertise, in particular in human rights or legal matters.

Last but not least, the Council of Europe cooperates intensively with the European Union. Both institutions strive for greater European union. In 1993, the European Council (not to be confused with the Council of Europe) adopted the so-called Copenhagen Criteria of Democracy, Human Rights, and the Rule of Law. The main aims of the two organizations are therefore rather similar, but their respective competences are different. The EU can adopt legislation that applies directly in its 15 member States, whereas the Council of Europe is basically an organization providing for inter-parliamentary and intergovernmental cooperation. In the 21st century both organisations will continue to play an essential role in the European integration process.

Thank you.