#32 Closing convention on the Europe is MORE than you think Award in Strasbourg (France)

Council of Europe – Quo Vadis?

Text and photos by Andrei Ioniţă

The 61st year of the Council of Europe opened with the PACE winter session. After ‘harvesting the fruit’ of more than a half century of cooperation, the 2010s start with a handful of problems, ranging from the Middle East peace process’ slow progress, to the very well known recent breakdown of the global economy and right down to major reforms within the Council. What does the future hold in store for Europe?

The idea of a united Europe has been around for over half a millennium, some dating it back to King George of Podebrady of Bohemia in 1464. On a more historically famous approach, Napoleon thought, in the 19th century, that “the United States of Europe would become a possibility”. The definition of “Europe” has never been more ambiguous – while ancient Greeks defined Europe to be the continent delimited by the river Phasis (nowadays the Rioni River in Georgia) – today’s “Europe” is used in a much more geopolitical way, used in reference either to the EU (27 member states) or to the Council of Europe (47 member states).

But as times are changing, being the oldest working European organization doesn’t make things easy for the Council. While having over 60 years of experience and 47 member states makes the Council an impressive database of knowledge and information, this can also cause a quite slow progress in issues that would otherwise require a faster reaction – take, for instance, the Middle-East crisis or the escalating Georgia-Russia conflict. On this last issue, which has been of extreme significance for the Council, Lluís Maria de Puig, former president of the parliamentary assembly stated in his mandate report that “we did everything we could to replace military confrontation with dialog, a search for a political solution. We failed. I hope that the Council will be able to restart this process”. Throughout his term of office, Mr. de Puig had emphasized on creating relationships with Europe’s neighbors in Asia and elsewhere. With the new President, Mr. Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, “Europe is at a turning point. The Council is at a point of change which should provide an opportunity for it to be revitalized and to become more effective”, Mr. de Puig said.

In order for the Council to still be relevant in this new decade, some changes need to occur. The Council needs a comprehensive reform package. One of the most important supporters of the ongoing reforms within the Council is the Secretary General, Mr. Thorbjørn Jagland, who was elected in September 2009, with a mandate to revitalize and reinforce the organization. The main focus of the reform, in the eyes of the COE, is to make the organization fit and able to guard the European Convention on Human Rights better than ever before. When presenting the report on the progress made so far, Mr. Jagland launched the idea that putting the reform in a broad political framework is an important step in achieving success.

While the reform will require some administrative changes, these changes should be driven by policy objectives. At the end of the reform process, the COE needs to come out as a revitalized political body and an innovative organization. Although the reform is not about cutting costs, “achieving savings” is the keyword for this period, so the Council will try to focus on working on fewer, more valuable projects. Does this mean that current projects might get shutdown? When trying to find out more about it, the SG declared that terminating projects is not an option at the moment, as it would weaken the organization. “We need to concentrate on making our current work more visible and relevant to the citizens of Europe”, Mr. Jagland said.

The first stage of the reform is based on four interrelated pillars: Better Governance, Operational Pillar, Own Structures and the ECHR. These four pillars are the key elements in achieving success in this first stage of change.

By Better Governance, the Council wants to achieve better cooperation between the main two decision-making bodies inside the organization: the Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly. Communication services would go under audit to evaluate the spending of allocated resources. Two new services will be created, that will ensure direct linking between activity planning and resources and to create a new quality control tool. These two new services will be the Budget and Programme Service, under the Directorate General of Administration and Logistics and the new, independent Internal Oversight Service, responsible of all aspects of quality control.

Under the Operational Pillar, the Council includes the need for more impact and field presence with its activities. The main focus is now on “areas where we have real comparative advantages. We should move in the direction of fewer, but more effective projects and programmes […] and should consider more use of Partial Agreements and voluntary contributions”. The goal is to create a network of budget-neutral COE Offices that shouldn’t be regarded as an impromptu attachment to the organization, but rather as a whole with the COE body, without duplicating any other organization in the field.

The Own Structures Pillar implies that a restructuring is vital in achieving the organization’s political objectives, while being focused on cost-effectiveness. Administrative changes should be driven by policy objectives, not the other way around.

In the end, the fourth and most important Pillar is the European Convention on Human Rights, considered to be the jewel in the crown of the COE. The European Court on Human Rights is now challenged by its own success. The main focus in reforming the ECHR is to make the Court able to deal with more applications more effectively. The two key aspects in achieving this is the EU accession to the ECHR and the ratification of Protocol 14 that simplifies the Court’s procedures on deciding admissibility of cases and on handling obvious cases. But there’s also a financial reform in view for the ECHR. If the Council will continue transferring money from the Programmes of Activity Budget, as it happened more than once up until now, it risks not having any more money left for important programmes or activities. The survival of the COE as a whole is directly linked to finding solutions to be more cost-effective.

Although the definition of “Europe” has never been more ambiguous, the idea of a Common European House still lives on. Willy Brandt, a famous German politician once said that “security in Europe is indivisible: it is for all or for none”. But in the new context of strong globalization, Europe must build a house open to the world. Today’s challenges are no longer affecting single areas or countries; they are affecting continents or the entire planet. Europe holds a vital role in this new stage of evolution, and so does the Council of Europe.

The reforms are not a onetime process; they need to be constantly maintained and supervised. As Mr. Jagland declared in the end of his speech, “In the struggle for peace and stability, there are no irreversible victories. We must not drop our guard. What we need to do is match the courage, the determination and the vision of the people who conceived and signed the Treaty of London in 1949.”

 

 

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