Council of Europe

Lord Anderson of Swansea Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, the Minister made a positive and welcome speech on the Council of Europe. Last year the noble Earl, my noble friend Lord Prescott and I were in Strasbourg celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Council. Over the 60 years, the Council has defended common European values, worked as a pan-European organisation and monitored member states’ compliance with obligations on human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Even though the treaty was signed in London in 1949, it was not welcomed at the beginning, when Ernest Bevin, the then Foreign Secretary, said:

“I don’t like it. When you open that Pandora’s Box, all sorts of Trojan Horses will come out of it”.

I do not believe that Trojan horses have indeed come out of it, but the statute of the Council of Europe refers, of course, to the unity of Europe but not to European Union. It has always been apart from the federalist tradition of Europe, which ultimately led to the Rome treaty and the European Union.

In 1960-61, my first job was as a foreign office adviser to the Council of Europe Assembly. At that time, there was a great deal of despondency because the Council of Europe, which was founded before the Common Market, as it then was, had been overtaken by it. I was told by our then ambassador John Peck that at the meeting of Ministers’ deputies in 1959, when they were discussing how best to celebrate the 10th anniversary, Tommy Woods, the Irish Minister’s deputy, had suggested 10 minutes’ silence. Since that time, the Council has indeed found a role but it has not been really well recognised in the member countries.

Certainly, its low profile has led to all sorts of distortions. Members of this House may have noticed an article in the Sunday Times of 7 November, headed:

“Kennedy joins EU drinking group”.

It said that Charles Kennedy, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who quit because of an alcohol problem, is to join a European Union delegation notorious for its drinking culture. Not only is that a nasty slur on a highly respected Member of Parliament, it is wholly inaccurate and very much in the Sunday Times tradition of seeing the Council of Europe as another awful European Union institution.

Over the decades since 1959, in my judgment, the council has gained a new self-confidence. During the Cold War it was a bastion of democratic values; it was a model, a bulwark, against totalitarianism. After 1989 and the year of revolutions, it was a school of democracy for countries of central and eastern Europe, the former Soviet satellites. Now it has become a place of reconciliation for other conflicts, based, of course, in Strasbourg, no better symbol of reconciliation in the post-war world. Germany joined, then Austria, then the neutral Switzerland, then the newly independent Malta and Cyprus. As has been mentioned—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, who made this point—there is a real role for Turkey. Not only is the president of the assembly currently a Turk but, from this month, Turkey holds the presidency of the Council.

The Council was involved in mediating last week in Moldova, as I learnt this morning when I was in Paris at a meeting of the Council. It has tried to moderate the Russian/Georgian confrontation, and at least there is jaw-jaw between the Russian and Georgian delegates in Strasbourg.

Over the years UK politicians have played a sterling role. I have just had a telephone message from the noble Lord, Lord Roper, who says:

“My father in law was the first British president”

of the Assembly. As one looks through the roll call of British participants, one sees Winston Churchill, Jim Callaghan, Rab Butler, George Brown, Alec Douglas-Home, Roy Jenkins, my noble friend Lord Healey and so on, and of course the previous Secretary-General, Terry Davis, is British.

By far the greatest contribution of the Council, though, has been in the field of soft security generally and human rights in particular. It has been the conscience of Europe or, as the current Secretary-General, Thorbjørn Jagland, has said,

“the lighthouse of Europe, a house for early warning”.

It has institutionalised human rights, including minority rights, and brought 47 European countries together in defence of the rule of law, fundamental rights and democracy.

The point in relation to the European Convention of Human Rights and the European Court has already been made, that Europe’s 800 million-plus people are able to seek individual redress when states violate their basic rights. In this it is assisted by a commissioner for human rights, who will be in this Parliament next week. The problem, as the Minister pointed out, has been the tide of applications, with an enormous backlog, and the misuse by certain states. How confident is the Minister that the Interlaken agreement, with the sifting mechanism, will lead to a reduction in that backlog and allow the court to get on with its proper work?

For time reasons, I will not go through in detail the other key conventions and human rights, but they include the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. One achievement has been that since 1997 none of the Council of Europe’s 47 member states has enforced the death penalty. There is the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. There are conventions on cyberspace, on medical ethics and on social rights. The monitoring activities, including those of the Venice Commission, have been important.

I shall conclude with some observations. The Minister is well thought of in the House because of his reflective view on the future of Europe. As he knows, institutions are extremely slow to change even if the context changes. I therefore question him on how he sees the developments on the European landscape.

It may be said that the European landscape is just too full of institutions, some of which may well have served their purpose. The Western European Union is coming to an end next June. How does the Minister see the possible integration of some of the work? My noble friend Lord Prescott made the point very well that the European Union is going into the field of human rights like an imperialist. Now that it has become a member of the convention, is there not an argument for aligning policies more closely? Perhaps the European Parliament should have a role with the Council of Europe in the election of judges. Perhaps the European Union should leave this field to an organisation which is of not 27 but 47 members and, therefore, rather more important in seeking to promote human rights Europe-wide.

President Medvedev floated the idea of a new security structure in Europe two years ago. At that time, in June 2008, the whole élan was overtaken by the Russian invasion of Georgia which violated the very principles that President Medvedev had enunciated. Now, perhaps, we can sit back in a more calm and reflective way and see—given that we have the OSCE, formed at a particular period of time in the Helsinki accords—whether there is still a role for national Parliaments meeting together to have some security responsibility now that the Western European Union is about to be wound up. How does the Minister see how the various European institutions can work together?

What better time to do so, when all Governments are looking at ways of cutting expenditure in the current global crisis? The Council of Europe is extraordinarily cheap and modest in its expenditure for the work that is done. The Minister will be well aware of politicians’ temptation to roam and extend their remit more widely. This is currently very much the case in the European Union. How does the Minister respond to the new Secretary-General’s initiatives announced following his appointment? The first stage—the internal governance of the Council—has almost been completed, and the process is now moving on to the more difficult and political stage.

Clearly, there is an area in which the Council of Europe adds value more than any other institution: human rights. How does the Minister see the relationship with the European Union after the Lisbon treaty? How does one prevent the overlap and duplication of work of several institutions? How do the Minister and the planners in the Foreign Office see the best form of European architecture, in both security and human rights, given the changes that are coming about?

I end on this note: the Council of Europe has played a key role as part of the institutional landscape of Europe after the Second World War. Rather like Voltaire’s God, if it did not exist we would have to invent it. Its development was blocked prior to 1989. I recall the phrase of President Gorbachev about our “common European home”. We could say at the time, “How can we possibly have a common European home when there is a wall”—the Berlin Wall—“right through the front room?”. Now the Berlin Wall has gone, we can look a little more objectively at how Europe might develop. No institution or landscape is static. All are dynamic.

I shall be interested personally in how Her Majesty’s Government and the Minister view the development and rationalisation of organisations and their prioritisation. Certainly, it is the wish of the new Secretary-General and Ministers not to clip the Council’s wings, but to recognise the sterling work it has done, particularly on human rights, and to ensure that that area is allowed to develop. It is a good time for radical thinking about our European institutions.