ETS no. 001 - Statute of the Council of Europe

The aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles which are their common heritage and facilitating their economic and social progress.

• "Greater unity": the Council is charged with working towards greater European integration;
• "safeguarding" a "common heritage" of "ideals and principles": this is a defensive job, closer to that of "watchdog";
• "facilitating" "economic and social progress": an extremely broad and weighty aim.

In practice, economic aims have been taken over by the European Economic Community (the essential pillar of the European Union) and its partnership agreements with other European countries. The Council of Europe's contribution to economic progress is through its work on what could be called Europe's cultural (legal, political, ethical) infrastructure:

Council of Europe in Brief

Human Rights... Democracy... Rule of Law

These values are the foundations of a tolerant and civilised society and indispensable for European stability, economic growth and social cohesion. On the basis of these fundamental values, we try to find shared solutions to major problems such as terrorism, organised crime and corruption, cybercrime, bioethics and cloning, violence against children and women, and trafficking in human beings. Co-operation between all member states is the only way to solve the major problems facing society today.

In other words, the watchdog activity is meant to feed into action in the form of cooperation between the 47 member countries. Also, as a watchdog, the Council of Europe has teeth: one year after its founding, it promulgated the European Convention on Human Rights which set up the European Court of Human Rights, a supreme court whose decisions are binding on member states. Since 1998, 800 million European citizens have direct access to this court for redress in situations where they feel their fundamental rights are not respected. (This could of course have a bearing on the burqa discussion in the Salon).

ECHR building in Strasbourg

• On democracy and political affairs, the COE's activities include advisory work on improving local and regional government and better governance strategies, organising better cooperation between countries, setting standards and registering International NGOs.
• The Social Cohesion directorate works through research, information, advice, and standard-setting on a wide range of social issues: demography, migration, health, family, equality of access to rights
• The Cultural Cooperation directorate deals with intercultural dialogue, education, and sport
• a legal directorate looks after matters of public international law, and also includes an anti-terrorism section.

The COE's institutions include a Committee of Ministers, composed of the Foreign Ministers of the 47 member states, which is the executive body, and the Parliamentary Assembly composed of delegations from the members states' parliaments - an advisory, not a legislative body. These institutions, the European Court of Human Rights, and the directorates and advisory bodies of the COE are based in Strasbourg. Take the tour with Jerome a Paris, a native of the city.

Thought: The organisation in directorates-general (DGs) is obviously echoed in the DGs of the European Commission. Though the COE cooperates with the EU and there are shared programmes, the split between the two organisations is a reminder of the relentless and increasing market focus of the EU. While the EU concentrates on the single market, the COE plugs away on society, culture, citizenship, rights, equal access.

I wonder if the cause of European integration might not be better served by a greater degree of integration between the EU and the COE?