Intense week for Belgian Didier Reynders and Croatian Marija Pejčinović Burić, both finalists for the post of Secretary General of the Council of Europe (CoE): after having been selected by the Committee of Ministers (CM) on 27 March last (see EUROPE 12223/33), they followed on Monday 8 April with a series of major oral presentations to the political groups of the Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) meeting in Strasbourg plenary.
Both are Deputy Prime Ministers and Ministers of Foreign and European Affairs, not to mention the Defence portfolio for Didier Reynders. Both are from the right, Mouvement réformateur (MR) for Didier Reynders, Union démocrate croate (HDZ) for Marija Pejčinović Burić. Both chaired the CoE Committee of Ministers from November 2014 to May 2015 for the first, from May to November 2018 for the second.
At the moment, however, it is the Belgian who is holding the line. He received two thirds of the necessary support for the CM in the first round of the vote, while the Croatian candidate was only selected in the second round. The other two candidates for the post, namely the former Prime Minister of Lithuania, Andrius Kubilius, and the former Greek Foreign Minister, Dora Bakoyannis, had never obtained a convincing result (see EUROPE 12170/20).
While the fact that the Council of Europe has only known one woman Secretary General in 70 years (the French Catherine Lalumière from 1989 to 1994) could work in Marija Pejčinović Burić's favour, her Croatian nationality is not an asset after the election of the Bosnian Dunja Mijatović as Commissioner for Human Rights in January 2018. It is hard to imagine that a second position of this importance would be granted to a Balkan country. Didier Reynders himself retorts to the gender argument with that of geographical origin. "Even rarer than a woman, a Benelux national, CoE general secretary, I would be the first!"
The Belgian is therefore "confident" at the start of the final straight that will lead to the final election scheduled for the beginning of PACE's June plenary session. "The feedback from parliamentarians is positive", he said after a series of hearings where he had outlined his "project that had matured over the past year and a half".
To break the deadlock for an CoE in crisis, Didier Reynders proposes to reinvent the synergy between PACE and the CM, which has been undermined since the Assembly's unilateral decision to sanction Russia after the annexation of the Crimea in 2014 (see EUROPE 11058/27). The Russians then slammed PACE's door, but continued to sit on the CM, creating an institutional tension that the CoE has been trying to normalise since then - but without success to date.
In this better coordination between the two statutory bodies, Didier Reynders wants to associate another CoE body: the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities. "It is the body closest to the citizens", he emphasises. "In the troubled continent" that is Europe, "we must return to the basics, protect citizens' rights and give greater visibility to the CoE, which is too often confused with the European Union". "This could also involve the Union's accession to the European Convention on Human Rights", he added, firmly determined to put the subject back on the table.
Another point raised by Didier Reynders was the financial question. Since June 2017, Russia has suspended its contribution to the CoE budget, which corresponds to an annual deficit of 33 million. After drawing on its reserves, the organization is now developing plans of cutbacks, both in terms of its activities and its staff. "To strengthen the CoE, we must secure its future by seeking funding that does not depend on the goodwill of one of its 47 member states", said Didier Reynders.
To this end, he recommends supplementing national contributions "with funding from the European Union as well as funds allocated by major private partners who would work in areas such as artificial intelligence". "The risk of conflicts of interest exists", he concedes, "but mechanisms can be put in place to avoid them, just as PACE did in the fight against state corruption following Azerigate". (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)