Our journey through the institutions of Europe continues, and this time we go inside the Council of Europe, an intergovernmental organisation, as explained in the first part of this section. The Council of Europe‘s mandate par excellence is the promotion of fundamental rights, democracy and the rule of law within its 47 member states.
Large Movements, through Laura Sacher’s experience as a trainee in one of the divisions of the Council of Europe, has been into this international organisation and this article is the result of some aspects of some departments she stayed in touch with during her experience. However, all the general work of the Council of Europe is more complex and difficult to summarise in an article.
The internal organisation of the Council of Europe is complex, and it is not easy to understand its functioning and the strategies implemented by the numerous entities composing it. From an external overview, the Council is made up of two main operational directorates general, the Directorate General of Human Rights and Rule of Law, DGI, and the Directorate General of Democracy, DGII. Until 2010, there were also DGIII and DGIV, respectively responsible for cohesion policies and education and culture. The subsequent merger incorporated DGIII and DGIV mainly into DGII.
The head of DGI is its Director General, Christos Giakoumopoulos, appointed in 2017. There is also a Special Representative of the General Secretariat for Migration and Refugees, with whom we had the honour to discuss about the New Pact on Migration and Asylum.
The Council of Europe promotes the respect for human rights, democracy and the rule of law by following a specific working method: standards setting; monitoring; cooperation.
It is from cooperation that we get into the first DGI entity, the Coordination and International Co-operation division. It was established in 2017 with the aim to co-ordinate co-operation with the EU – notably its Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) – and the UN, the Council of Europe’s action as regards abolition of the death penalty. It also provides the secretariat of the Raoul Wallenberg Prize, dedicated to reward significant humanitarian achievements by a group of individuals or an organisation; and follows the events in Belarus with a view to ensuring a coordinated approach.
An example of the division’s coordination action is the organisation of awards, such as Raoul Wallenberg award, dedicated to significant humanitarian achievements of a group of individuals or an organisation. Coordination means also regulating the internal relations of all the departments of the DG, and therefore the division ensures coherence between the projects, proposals and priorities of the rest of the entities. Finally, the Head of the Coordination and International Cooperation Division is the Council of Europe Contact Person of the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA).
A second relevant aspect of the Coordination and International Co-operation division is the selection of projects to be managed by DGI. The latter takes place Every two years, now for four years, the Office of the Directorate of Programmes (ODGP) asks the departments to submit their project proposals, among which most relevant ones are selected for implementation. Once projects are launched, the monitoring phase is on the responsibility of the Coordination and International Co-operation Division, which follows the implementation through consolidated reports based on the implementation reports of the implementing departments which are in constant contact with the beneficiaries (generally the institutions of the Member States of the Council of Europe). Being within the DGI, projects are mainly of a legal nature such as freedom of expression and media, efficiency of justice system, prisons and police, affective implementation of human rights standards or fight against crime, corruption and financing of terrorism.
Let’s go now into the Human Rights Directorate which includes several entities, the Department for the Execution of Judgements of the European Court of Human Rights and the Department of the European Social Charter. Despite the name of the department which might suggest that the department focuses its efforts only on the European Social Charter, the department deals also with the European Social Security Code and intergovernmental cooperation which entrusted to the European Platform for Social Cohesion. In addition, the Department provides some cooperation activities and it also animates a CoE-FRA-ENNHRI-Equinet platform on social and economic rights.
A parenthesis on the European Social Charter is necessary. It is a treaty of the Council of Europe that aims to protect the so-called “second generation rights“, such as the right to housing, health, employment and poverty. This year, the Council of Europe European Social Charter (1961) and the Revised European Social Charter (1996) celebrate respectively their 60th and 25th anniversary. The Charter offers the possibility for member states to accept some (or all) of its provisions. The monitoring of accepted provisions, through reports or collective complaints, is different and strengthened depending on the non-accepted provisions.
Until now all member states of the Council of Europe have signed either the 1961 Charter or the 1996 Charter, while four member states (Liechtenstein, Monaco, San Marino, Switzerland) have not yet ratified either version of the European Social Charter. As a result, 43 countries are bound by either the 1961 or the 1996 Charter, nine countries have not yet ratified the revised Charter (Germany and Spain are in the process of doing so), and finally 15 states have accepted the collective complaints procedure (Spain is in the process of accepting this procedure)”. Among the department’s missions is to direct and supervise negotiations between countries on the application of the Charter.
Another department that involves several other divisions is the Human Rights Policy and Co-operation Department, which deals with the management of activities and programmes with international third parties. Among them, is the Division of Cooperation with International Bodies. The division mainly serves as the Secretariat for the negotiation of the European Union’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). While its 27 member states are High Contracting Parties to the ECHR, the European Union (EU) itself is currently not. EU accession to the ECHR, which is a legal obligation under the EU’s Lisbon treaty, would provide the same external control with regard to human rights for the EU as for its member states. Therefore, it would bring further coherence to the human rights architecture in Europe. This is all the more important as the EU increasingly operates in areas which are human rights-sensitive (such as asylum/migration, border control, criminal law cooperation or civil/military missions in the context of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy). An earlier accession agreement was not held to be compatible with the EU treaties, as found by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in 2014. Last year, the negotiations (in which all 47 Council of Europe member states as well as the European Union participate) have resumed to revise this accession agreement to address the concerns raised by the CJEU. In a joint statement at the occasion of the negotiation resumption, the Council of Europe’s Secretary General, Marija Pejčinović Burić, and the EU Commission’s Vice President for Values and Transparency, Věra Jourová, declared: “In these difficult times, the resumption of these crucial negotiations sends a strong signal about the commitment of our two organisations, and our member states, to the fundamental values that we cherish. We very much hope that the negotiations can be brought to a speedy and successful conclusion for the benefit of Europe as a whole.”
The Human Rights Policy and Co-operation Department also includes the Division of Independent Human Rights Bodies, which has, on the one hand, a unit on migration and displacement and, on the other hand, a unit on the prevention of torture and ill-treatment. Within the Department the cooperation projects are pursued at large to support national authorities in upholding Council of Europe standards and the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. A specific working group focus on alternatives to immigration detention, especially for people in a vulnerable situation where detention should be prevented and where other means of upholding migration regulations should be pursued. Detention and migration are both subjects of particular vulnerability and criticality, and it is very important to support Member States in addressing these sensitive issues so as to prevent human rights violations while also ensuring effective migration management. Once standards have been set, implementation, both nationally and internationally, is the key process. This is where cooperation projects become instrumental, with the concrete support of specialised divisions in the field working directly with authorities and other national interlocutors, aiming at initiate constructive reforms.
In such sensitive areas, cooperation with other departments and entities is essential. External relations with the European Union also play an important role. The Council of Europe obviously has greater geographical scope than the EU as we are 47 Member States and we have of course a very different mandate but cooperation in Europe is essential for moving forward. This can only be an additional element of exchange with its interlocutors. Although it is a very difficult area there are definitely some positive developments in certain areas and locations, but in other places there are steps backwards so the work must continue. Good practices must be shared more widely as there truly are alternative ways that actually work and are beneficial both for the authorities and the individuals in question.
A second major entity that coordinates further departments is Information Society and Action Against Crime Directorate. Following the statement of the Director from the official web site, this Directorate is responsible for the Council of Europe’s work on the media, information society and for action against crime. The Directorate’s activities comprise standard setting, monitoring and cooperation activities on a wide variety of issues, including freedom of expression, data protection, internet governance, cybercrime, criminal law, fighting economic crime, corruption and money laundering as well as action against drug trafficking and drug abuse. It also promotes transparency and understanding of the functioning of audiovisual industries in Europe from a legal and economic point of view.
DGI includes also the European Commission for Democracy through Law, more commonly known as the Venice Commission, as the Italian city where its members meet. The Commission has The Commission has 62 member states (47 Council of Europe member states and 15 other countries) represented by university professors of public and international law, supreme and constitutional court judges, members of national parliaments and a number of civil servants. Its mandate is to provide legal advice to its member states, helping to align the states’ legal and institutional structures with the European standards; it also contributes to ensure the dissemination and consolidation of a common constitutional heritage, playing a unique role in conflict management, and provides “emergency constitutional aid” to states in transition.
Next month we will explore DGII and make you understand the functioning of the Council of Europe’s field offices in the Member States.
