With more than 40 European heads of state and government confirmed to attend, the Council of Europe Summit in Reykjavik on 16-17 May can already be considered a success.
Some are even talking of a “historic summit”, consecrated by a family photo which will be all the more significant as the central theme of the summit will be solidarity with Ukraine in the war declared on it by the Russian Federation.
“We will send a message to the aggressor”, summarised Marija Pejčinović Burić on Thursday 11 May: “no crime will go unpunished”.
The core of the Final Declaration will be devoted to the launch of a “Register of Material, Physical and Moral Damage” inflicted on Ukraine during this war.
As a first step towards a process of compensation, this Register will be established in The Hague and set up in Reykjavik on the basis of an enlarged Partial Agreement open for signature to the 46 Member States of the Council of Europe, observer countries (United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Holy See) and any other third country.
The European Union will be one of the founders of the Register, announced a tweet from the EU’s Permanent Representation to the Council of Europe on the evening of 11 May. And it will provide “a first voluntary contribution” for the “rapid set-up” of the mechanism.
This first funding could be up to €1 million.
Several observers note the strengthening of EU/Council of Europe relations, which will be reflected in the visit to Reykjavik of Charles Michel, President of the European Council, and Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the Commission.
At the Council of Europe Summit in Warsaw in 2005, one year after the enlargement to Central and Eastern European countries, the Union sent “only its Commissioner for External Relations”, they note...
However, the issue of the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights will not be completed immediately, although negotiations between the two sides have made remarkable progress in recent months.
What remains open concerns the Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and can only be settled between its 27 Member States.
While the Final Declaration of the Summit will focus on Ukraine, the establishment of the “Register of Damage”, a call for the creation of a tribunal against the crime of aggression and the issue of the deportation of Ukrainian children, several annexes will broaden the political scope.
One will be devoted to the other central theme of the Summit: the re-engagement of states around the values of the Council of Europe - democracy, the rule of law and human rights - in a Europe facing a dangerous democratic backslide.
Another will be the reaffirmation of the pre-eminence of the European Convention on Human Rights as the bedrock of these fundamental values and the political re-commitment of states to the execution of the Court’s judgments
A third will address the issue of the recognition of the right to a healthy, clean and sustainable environment as a fundamental right.
This last theme is a complex one and is being promoted by the Icelandic Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, which is organising the Summit.
It will not, at this stage, take the form of the announcement of an additional protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights devoted to the environment, but a “Reykjavik Commission” could be set up in order, on the one hand, to centralise all that the Council of Europe does in this field through existing Conventions and, on the other, to lay down the guidelines on which the Court could base its decisions.
The issue of human rights in the face of artificial intelligence will not be the subject of a specific annex, but is on the agenda of the Summit.
Among the EU leaders who will be in Reykjavik are German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who announced his visit in January, his Austrian counterpart, Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.
Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, finally confirmed his arrival after some suspense about it.
French President Emmanuel Macron will also be present and will give an opening address, following those of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe and the Icelandic Prime Minister, with whom he will hold bilateral talks.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be absent due to the presidential election scheduled for 14 May.
And one wonders about the title and the names of the personalities who will represent countries like Hungary, Azerbaijan, Armenia or Serbia.
As far as Hungary is concerned, the visit of the President, Katalin Novák, has been mentioned.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is known to maintain ties with Moscow, should not be included in the “All united with Ukraine” family photo. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)