The meeting of the heads of state and government of the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, scheduled for 16 and 17 May in Reykjavik, was seen and described as a “Emergency summit”, and was the focus of the Parliamentary Assembly’s debates on Tuesday 24 January, with one central question: what should be its objectives?
Invited to speak at lunchtime, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said she was “convinced that the Council of Europe, as an early warning mechanism, plays a more crucial role than ever”. The 42-year old minister believes, “it is the political responsibility of [her] generation to maintain and strengthen this organisation that our elders built”.
This is all the more essential as the Council of Europe had “missed” the much-discussed “warning signs” of Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine, despite being alerted by the Eastern European countries. “We did not decide to act”, she lamented.
For Ms Baerbock, as for the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić, who succeeded her on the podium in the afternoon, the European Court of Human Rights plays a central role in this mechanism for the protection of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
The Reykjavik Summit will be an opportunity for national leaders to “recommit themselves to ensuring that the Court’s judgments are always promptly and fully executed in all member states”, said the second speaker, also referring to the “panoply” of instruments that the Organisation has at its disposal to defend and promote minorities, women, migrants, Roma, LGBTI persons, etc.
Both urged the European Union to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights and the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women. The Summit should be an opportunity to do so.
“Human rights should not be considered as a 20th century curio”, insisted Marija Pejčinović Burić, calling for “strong political will” to “strengthen the institution at national and international level”.
This requires that it should be “given the financial means”, the German minister stressed.
In the evening, the Parliamentary Assembly adopted a Recommendation preceded by a long debate also on the future summit.
Based on a report by Irish liberal Fiona O’Loughlin, the Recommendation calls on governments to reaffirm the role of the Council of Europe as a “community of values with a pan-European vocation”, to “show unwavering support for Ukraine”, and to “play an active and leading role in the creation of an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute Russia’s political and military leadership for the crime of aggression as well as to support an international compensation mechanism”, a point which the Secretary General had also insisted on.
The Assembly also calls for the impact of the Council’s work to be strengthened, in particular by creating both a “democracy checklist”, and a “Commissioner for Democracy and the Rule of Law”.
In the face of new challenges, she advocates the creation of new rights and instruments with regard to artificial intelligence and the “right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment”, while calling for the integration of a “youth perspective” in all the Organisation’s activities.
For the Council of Europe, this summit has an existential dimension, as Romanian liberal Ionuț-Marian Stroe highlighted during the debate: “It’s a make or break one”.
Link to the Recommendation: https://aeur.eu/f/52u (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)