Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe, a 46-nation international organisation dedicated to upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
The Assembly is made up of 306 members drawn from the national parliaments of the Council of Europe's member states, and meets four times a year for week-long plenary sessions in Strasbourg.
It is one of the two statutory bodies of the Council of Europe, along with the Committee of Ministers, the executive body representing governments, with which it holds an ongoing dialogue. However, it is the Assembly which is usually regarded as the "motor" of the organisation, holding governments to account on human rights issues, pressing states to maintain democratic standards, proposing fresh ideas and generating the momentum for reform.
The Assembly held its first session in Strasbourg on 10 August 1949, embodying at that time the hopes of many Europeans who, in the aftermath of World War II, saw European unity as the best way of preventing a return to the devastation of war, a "safety net" to prevent gross human rights violations such as the horrors of the Holocaust, and a democratic bulwark against tyranny.
Among the Assembly's main achievements are:
Unlike the European Parliament, the Assembly does not have the power to create binding laws. However, it speaks on behalf of 700 million Europeans and has the power to:
- demand action from the 46 Council of Europe governments, who - acting through the organisation's executive body - must jointly reply
- probe human rights violations in any of the member states
- question Prime Ministers and Heads of State on any subject
- send parliamentarians to observe elections and mediate over crises
- set the terms on which states may join the Council of Europe, through its power of veto
- inspire, propose and help to shape new national laws
- request legal evaluations of the laws and constitutions of member states
- sanction a member state by recommending its exclusion or suspension
Important statutory functions of PACE are the election of the judges of the European Court of Human Rights, from a list of three candidates submitted by governments, as well as the leading officials of the Council of Europe.
In general the Assembly meets four times per year in Strasbourg at the Palace of Europe for week-long plenary sessions. The nine permanent committees of the Assembly meet all year long to prepare reports and draft resolutions in their respective fields of expertise.
The Assembly sets its own agenda, but its debates and reports are primarily focused on the Council of Europe's three core statutory aims, defending human rights, promoting democracy and upholding the rule of law.Election of judges to the European Court of Human Rights
Judges of the European Court of Human Rights are elected by PACE from a list of three candidates nominated by each member state which has ratified the European Convention on Human Rights. A 20-member committee made up of parliamentarians with legal experience – meeting in camera – interviews all candidates for judge on the Court and assesses their CVs before making recommendations to the full Assembly, which elects one judge from each shortlist in a secret vote. Judges are elected for a period of nine years and may not be re-elected.
Although the European Convention does not, in itself, require member states to present a multi-sex shortlist of potential appointees, in a 2004 resolution PACE decided that it "will not consider lists of candidates where the list does not include at least one candidate of each sex" unless there are exceptional circumstances. As a result, around one-third of the current bench of are women, making the Court a leader among international courts on gender balance.Achievements
At its very first meeting, in the summer of 1949, the Parliamentary Assembly adopted the essential blueprint of what became the European Convention on Human Rights, selecting which rights should be protected and defining the outline of the judicial mechanism to enforce them. Its detailed proposal, with some changes, was eventually adopted by the Council of Europe's ministerial body, and entered into force in 1953. Today, seventy years later, the European Court of Human Rights – given shape and form during the Assembly's – is regarded as a global standard-bearer for justice, protecting the rights of citizens in 46 European nations and beyond, and paving the way for the gradual convergence of human rights laws and practice across the continent. The Assembly continues to elect the judges of the Court.Originator of the European flag and anthem
The Assembly was at the origin of both the Flag of Europe, the twelve yellow stars on a blue background, and the Anthem of Europe, an arrangement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ode to Joy. Having been proposed by the Assembly, both were adopted firstly by the Council of Europe, and - several years later - by the European Union. Both are now known worldwide as symbols of Europe.''Flag of Europe''
Various proposals for a flag were submitted to the Council of Europe in the early 1950s and on 25 September 1953 the Assembly officially adopted a version with fifteen stars, which represented the number of Council of Europe member states at the time. However "a difficulty arose" in the Council of Europe's ministerial body over the number of stars after West Germany objected that one was for the Saarland region, which was then under French control and did not rejoin Germany until 1957. It would have agreed to fourteen stars, but this was in turn unacceptable to France. Two years later, after further consultations, the twelve-star version was unanimously approved by both bodies of the Council of Europe, with twelve being regarded as a symbol of perfection, and no longer related to the number of states in the organisation. The institutions of the European Union began using the flag in 1986.''Anthem of Europe''
Propositions for an anthem for Europe began almost as soon as the Council of Europe was created in 1949. "Ode to Joy" had been suggested in the 1920s by the great pioneer of European unity, Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, and in a 1955 to the Council of Europe he proposed it again. However it was not until the early 1970s that the question was taken up by the Assembly's Committee on Regional Planning and Local Authorities. The parliamentarians saw an anthem as the next logical step, after the creation of the European flag in 1955 and Europe Day in 1964, to "spread the European idea" and - after of a possible Europe-wide competition - the committee decided that a piece of music without words would overcome the problem of multiple languages in Europe. The committee Beethoven was "justly regarded as one of the great European geniuses", and that his tune "had universal value". In a resolution adopted on 8 July 1971, the Assembly formally proposed "Ode to Joy" as the European anthem. The proposal found favour with the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, which formally adopted the anthem in 1972. It was subsequently taken up by the EU in 1985.In 1973 Swedish PACE member Astrid Bergegren first put forward a motion inviting member states to abolish the death penalty. Momentum built in the following years, and by 1980 the Assembly was calling on Europe's parliaments to abolish it, and insisting that the "right to life" included in the European Convention on Human Rights implied a ban on state killing. In 1989 the Assembly took the decision to make ending executions a condition of Council of Europe membership - just before a wave of central and eastern European nations joined the organisation. Today, the death penalty has been abolished in law in all 46 member states in peacetime, though some continue to allow it in time of war. Though rare calls are occasionally heard for its reintroduction, abolition continent-wide is now regarded as a major achievement of the Council of Europe as a whole, and it now joins others in pressing for abolition worldwide.Support for emerging democracies
Over the decades, the Assembly has been at the forefront of supporting democratic change in successive waves of European nations at key moments in their history, negotiating their entry into the Council of Europe "club of democracies". In the 1950s it led the way in embracing recently defeated Germany, in the 1960s it took a strong stand during the Greek crisis, and in the 1970s it welcomed post-Franco Spain and Portugal into the democratic fold. Above all, it played a key role after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, creating a path towards membership for former Communist countries with its "Special Guest status", paving the way for the historic reconciliation of European nations under one roof.In two reports for the Assembly in 2006 and 2007, Swiss Senator and former Prosecutor Dick Marty revealed convincing evidence that terror suspects were being transported to, held and tortured in CIA-run "secret prisons" on European soil. The evidence in his first report in 2006 – gathered with the help of investigative journalists and plane-spotters among others – suggested that a number of Council of Europe member states had permitted CIA "rendition flights" across their airspace, enabling the secret transfer of terror suspects without any legal rights. In a second report in 2007, Marty showed how two member states – Poland and Romania – had allowed "secret prisons" to be established on their territory, where torture took place. His main conclusions – subsequently confirmed in a series of rulings by the European Court of Human Rights, as well as a comprehensive US Senate report – threw the first real light on a dark chapter in US and European history in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, kicked off a series of national probes, and helped to make torture on European soil less likely.