Council of Europe

Earl of Dundee Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee]

My Lords, this is a timely debate. Membership of the new UK Council of Europe parliamentary delegation was announced only a few days ago and, since coming to power last May, the Government are still at an early stage of forming general policies for Europe.

However, many of us will have already become much heartened by the concession that our Prime Minister has recently won. This is to downsize the EU’s annual budgetary increase from 6 per cent to 2.9 per cent. That in turn serves to reduce any inconsistency between control of the EU economy and that currently deployed by and within each of the 27 member states. For our European partners and us together, it also inspires a common resolve for improved management.

Yet, although extremely important, the EU is only one of the necessary considerations. For Europe as a whole, we may well believe that the Government should focus on three separate yet related forms of security and their interaction. The first is defence and the maintenance of European peace. The second is the goal of effective political and economic delivery towards and within nation states. The third is the collective task of building up the confidence and well-being of families and communities within the Council of Europe’s wider affiliation of 47 states.

Among those three aspirations, the common factor is perhaps economic stability. That is so even though military defence and economic management are always different endeavours. Nevertheless, since the formation of NATO in 1949, the two have become ever more closely connected. Nor do we have to look far to find evidence that, since then, defence policy in Europe has borne the most fruit through a strong and healthy link to democracy and economic stability. NATO could hardly have been formed without the disbursement of Marshall aid the previous year, in 1948. The Cold War would not have ended as it did in the late 1980s had not the arms race come to exert unacceptable pressure on the economies of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact states.

At that time, as a result, the Soviet bloc decided to elevate the concerns of its own economy above ideology and empire. By 2000, it appeared that the former Yugoslavia had done the same, in its case by putting economic stability before territorial acquisition and ethnic cleansing. In both examples, the change of heart had been precipitated by successful NATO containment or intervention, although it may be regretted that the international community, which through NATO in 1999 acted decisively at last, did not do so at the outset of the conflict in 1991, when it could have done, thereby saving countless lives.

If in Europe, through NATO and to good effect, military defence has facilitated economic stability, the corollary to this is that economic stability has also assisted military defence. Through the EU, its manifestation and prospect continue to inspire European peace. Not least is that so in the case of former Yugoslavia. In that part of south-east Europe, lasting peace can best be secured through eventual EU membership of the states concerned. Clearly, it will take some time for all of them to accede. However, Croatia is expected to become a full EU member quite soon. Here I declare an interest as chairman of the UK parliamentary group for that country.

In the development of peace and economic stability in Europe since 1949, what then have been the achievements of the Council of Europe? How have these enhanced or complemented the work of NATO and the EU? And, following the Lisbon treaty, what is the Council of Europe’s future role?

Since 1949, the political experiment in Europe has been how to combine solidarity with national independence. From the 1990s, that formula has received greater credence. This is through subsidiarity and other safeguards. The notion seems strange, nevertheless. How can the citizen build up rights and duties within his state and within Europe at the same time? At least, how can he do so without conflicting loyalties?

Yet here already, through the European Convention on Human Rights adopted in 1950, the Council of Europe began to make sense of that apparent anomaly. The Court of Human Rights which followed in 1959 set the precedent for the European individual to be protected in his own right, irrespective of the particular state to which he belongs.

This precedent has also enabled a fresh background for European idealism. The Court of Human Rights puts state and citizen on an equal footing. Hitherto, and by contrast, a previous background had permitted the opposite extremes of harmful ideology. Such were the versions of communism or fascism prevalent in the 20th century. Those creeds either discount human rights altogether or else render them subservient to the state.

In terms of idealism, the Council of Europe has therefore produced a great victory for pragmatism and common sense. The citizen need no longer become prey to the whims of ideology; instead, his rights can be protected through the objective standards of democracy and the rule of law.

Arising from this, the Council of Europe has acted to foster legal co-operation and to safeguard the rule of law. It has done so through conventions and treaties including conventions on cybercrime, prevention of terrorism, against corruption and organised crime and trafficking in human beings, on the prevention of torture and on human rights and biomedicine. If, in the first place, state and citizen are perceived to be on an equal footing, it follows that these measures then stand to benefit each of state and citizen in its or his own right.

The same focus is shared by the various arms of the Council of Europe—its Parliamentary Assembly, Committee of Ministers, Congress of Local and Regional Authorities and Commissioner for Human Rights. The targets and beneficiaries of their combined work are individuals, families, communities, regions and states of Europe.

However, out of context, such work and its results might always be suspected to duplicate, double-handle or conflict with efforts made elsewhere, or in the first instance even to upstage or undermine the agendas of nation states or the EU. Yet with a few exceptions, this is hardly ever the case. That is so since, on the continent, the Council of Europe is the only institution that relates to 800 million people within the affiliation of 47 states.

If, then, to date the Council of Europe has already much assisted Europe, what should become its future role? One paradox is that this institution should have managed to be so effective without wielding any executive power at all. Another, to which the Minister has already referred, is that so much of its important work goes unnoticed and unrecognised. A further anomaly reflects the respective costs of the Council of Europe and the EU, since the former costs roughly in one year what the latter does in one day.

On the scope for improved co-operation between the EU and the Council of Europe, the recent Juncker report has recommended a number of expedients: EU accession to the European Convention on Human rights, a joint legal and judicial system and EU acknowledgement of the Council as an expert authority on human rights in Europe. Does my noble friend agree with these aims? If so, can he say what progress is being made to advance them?

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights was launched in 2007. Yet, while costing a great deal, it may not have added very much to existing Council of Europe delivery. In view of that, does my noble friend consider that this EU agency should now be wound down?

Until recently, the European Court of Human Rights has had pending more than 140,000 cases. Compliance to protocol 14 by Russia and certain other states may well cause this backlog to be eased. My noble friend also mentioned the resolve to reform the Court of Human Rights in the longer term. In the shorter term, what recommendations can he make to reduce the current burden of the court?

If the future preference of EU member states might be to get things done much less through Brussels and much more through intergovernmental channels, the Council of Europe provides an opportunity. This thought revisits expediency. The Council of Europe upholds moral principles; that is its chief function. At the same time, however, it happens to operate through an intergovernmental process as well. By contrast, the EU does not. Thus, to circumnavigate red tape and to achieve certain purposes, our Government may wish to make further use of the Council of Europe for its flexibility and expediency.

Today is far too soon to identify such purposes. Be that as it may, does my noble friend agree that the next 12 months, until and in advance of the beginning of the British chairmanship of the Council of Europe in November 2011, is the right time to analyse and study a number of options? From this institution there is a unique opportunity to improve standards, as there is to encourage best practice throughout Europe.

Meanwhile, the Council of Europe’s contribution continues to be of incalculable value: to steer Europe away from misleading ideologies and, instead, towards a pragmatic idealism. Such is democracy, human rights and the rule of law.