A Brief History of the Council of Europe

A thousand delegates at The Hague

Compromise

"Greater" and "Smaller" Europe

Early developments

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'état a few weeks earlier. The Turkish delegation only resumed its place in 1984 after the holding of free elections.

An antechamber

From the fall of the Berlin wall to the Vienna summit

The Council of Europe in an enlarged Europe

How the Council of Europe works

The Council of Europe comprises:

· a decision making body: the Committee of Ministers

· a deliberative body: the Parliamentary Assembly

· a voice for local democracy: the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe

· The Committee of Ministers

The Committee of Ministers is the decision-making body of the Council of Europe. It directly represents the governments of the member States.

It is composed of the Minister for foreign affairs of each member State. The Minister may be represented by an alternate who is either a member of government or a senior diplomat.

The chairmanship of the Committee changes with each six-month session, in the English alphabetical order of the member States.

The Ministers' Deputies meet in plenary two to three times a month. Their decisions have the same authority as the Committee of Ministers.

The conduct of meetings of the Ministers and their Deputies is governed by the Statute and rules of procedure.

The Deputies are assisted by a Bureau, Rapporteur Groups and ad hoc groups.

- firstly as the emanation of the governments which enables them to express on equal terms their national approaches to the problems confronting Europe's societies;

- secondly as the collective forum where European responses to these challenges are worked out;

The work and activities of the Committee of Ministers include :

* political dialogue

* interacting with the Parliamentary Assembly

* interacting with the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (CLRAE)

* follow-up to respect of commitments by member States

* admission of new member States

* concluding conventions and agreements

* adopting recommendations to member States

* adopting the budget

* adopting and monitoring the Intergovernmental Programme of Activities

* supervising the execution of judgments of the European Convention on Human Rights by the member States

The Ministers' Deputies meet at least once a month. They draw up the Council of Europe's activities programme and adopt its budget, which today amounts to some 1 300 million French francs. It also decides what follow-up should be given to proposals of the Parliamentary Assembly, the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities and the specialist ministerial conferences that the Council of Europe regularly organises.

· The Parliamentary Assembly

The Parliamentary Assembly is the parliamentary organ of the Council of Europe consisting of a number of individual representatives from each member State, with a President elected each year from among them for a maximum period of three sessions. The present President is Lord Russell-Johnston, a British Liberal Democrat (LDR) member of the House of Lords.

They are appointed to the Parliamentary Assembly in a manner which is left to be decided by each member state as long as they are elected within their national or federal Parliament, or appointed from amongst the members of that parliament. The balance of political parties within each national delegation must ensure a fair representation of the political parties or groups in their national parliaments.

The Standing Committee consists of the Bureau, the Chairpersons of national delegations and the Chairpersons of the general committees. It is generally convened at least twice a year and its major task is to act on behalf of the Assembly when the latter is not in session. Each year one of the Standing Committee meetings, together with a number of other committees, takes place normally in one of the member states.

The Joint Committee is the forum set up to co-ordinate the activities of, and maintain good relations between, the Committee of Ministers and the Assembly.

It is composed of a representative of each member Government and a corresponding number of representatives of the Assembly (the members of the Bureau and one representative of each parliamentary delegation of member States not represented on the Bureau).

The secretariat of the Assembly is headed by Mr Bruno Haller, Secretary General of the Assembly who is elected by it for a period of five years.

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly is made up of 286 representatives and the same number of substitutes from the parliaments of the member states. Each delegation's composition reflects that of its parliament of origin.

The Parliamentary Assembly hold four plenary sessions a year. Its debates on a wide range of social issues and its recommendations to the Committee of Ministers have been at the root of many of the Council of Europe's achievements.

The Assembly plays a key role in the accession process for new members and in monitoring compliance with undertakings entered into.

· The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe