In a resolution adopted on Wednesday 11 October, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) approved a list of six criteria, set out by the Venice Commission, to clarify the so far undefined notion of the rule of law.
“The existence of this list is the final stage of a reflection launched by PACE in 2007”, said Belgian Socialist Philippe Mahoux, the rapporteur on this dossier. It aims to resolve an almost existential paradox for the Council of Europe (CoE), which the report explains as follows: the notions of rule of law and pre-eminence of law appear regularly in the CoE's major political documents and in many conventions and recommendations, but they have not been defined in any text and no specific monitoring mechanism has been set in place.
The operational approach of the Venice Commission, which got round the problem of a formal definition by setting out specific criteria instead, was welcomed by PACE and the following list has been approved: - legality (implying a procedure for the adoption of legal texts based on transparency, accountability and democracy); - legal certainty; - a prohibition on arbitrary measures; - access to justice before independent and impartial courts with jurisdictional control over administrative acts; - respect for human rights, and; - non-discrimination and equality before the law.
The list, which was approved by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and by the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in 2016, and has now been approved by PACE, is a new harmonised standard of evaluation, to be used not only by the CoE (the monitoring committee in particular), but also all players engaged in promoting and reinforcing the principles of the rule of law, including the EU, which has already expressed great deal of interest in the list.
According to Anne Brasseur, former chair of PACE, this report is a potential “export of the Council of Europe”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)