Parliamentary Assembly

Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen, I very much appreciate your invitation to address your Assembly. We know and can never forget that it is you who were the cradle of Europe.

You were born of a movement of opinion – and that in itself is remarkable – which was given expression at the Congress of Europe in The Hague, where Winston Churchill was the catalyst.

Your aims and objects are inscribed in the preamble and first article of your Statute. They are to promote those ideals which are common to us all, “the spiritual and moral values which are the true source of individual freedom, political liberty and the rule of law which form the basis of all genuine democracy”.

To achieve that aim, you were given very wide functions in “economic, social, cultural, scientific, legal and administrative matters and in the maintenance of human rights and fundamental freedoms”.

Certain institutions were set up in order to achieve these aims, of which your Assembly is the driving force. In 1949 it was really revolutionary to see members of parliament, quite independently of their governments, called upon to promote the unification of Europe. From the beginning, your desire has been to make yourselves the very embodiment of the idea of European solidarity by organising yourselves not in national delegations, but in political groups.

From the very beginning, too, you have had an exalted concept of your task. With your permission, I shall recall some of your major achievements, and then, in the second part of my address, describe briefly the relations between your organisation and European union.

You have many titles to fame. I cannot mention, them all, but here are some of them.

First of all, you have been and still are the centre of gravity, and thus the guarantor, of all states that respect the democratic ideal. In this context, vigilant guardian as you are of that ideal, you did not hesitate, when a military junta seized power in one of your member states, to force it to leave your organisation. No one can deny that on that occasion you assumed to the full the task assigned you in the preamble which I quoted just now:

“To promote the true source of genuine democracy based on individual freedom, political liberty and the rule of the law”.

Refusing to regard this ideal as a mere profession of faith, you proceeded to put it into concrete terms in a convention called “the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”. That act, unique in the annals of international law, gave teeth to the declarations of intent inscribed in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. It went even further and ensured respect for those rights by superimposing on the executive and legislative organs of the member states a judicial body which is distinctly federalist in concept.

The essential merit of the European convention is thus to protect not only states but individuals, and to provide them with an instrument which enables them to claim from an international court the effective enjoyment of the rights guaranteed by the convention.

The importance of that convention as the manifestation of the conscience of all mankind is such that the European Communities have recognised its effects. In a famous judgement on that point – the Mulde judgement – the Court of Justice of the European Communities, after declaring that they could not admit measures incompatible with the fundamental rights recognised and guaranteed by the states, added that, in order to determine what these rights were, reference should be made to the international treaties on the protection of human rights which the member states had concluded or to which they had subsequently acceded.

No doubt finishing touches need putting to the work because the climate of the 1970s is different from that which prevailed when the European convention was signed. At that time, Europe was just emerging from the second world war and was faced with the problems caused by the cold war. The authors of the convention were thus deeply conscious of the need to endow European civilisation with a code of fundamental human rights.

But the rapid development of a technological, scientific and industrial society has produced a new set of problems in the matter of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Modern techniques have multiplied the threats to private life. The computer, whose merits are so widely vaunted, can, in the hands of unscrupulous authorities, become a terrifying instrument for investigation and constraint. Modern methods of interfering with personality through certain psychological techniques can be even more insidious. I know, and I am delighted to know, that you are concerning yourselves with these matters, with the idea of establishing a proper balance between individual freedom and the needs of society.

Doubtless it should not be ruled out that when the community is more deeply engaged in the process of political integration it will be obliged, in consideration of its own raison d’être, to place the accent on certain political freedoms or certain economic rights.

Your second title to fame is that you have provided the framework for the elaboration of a large number of European conventions in the most varied fields. They deal with social affairs, public health, education, culture and legal affairs.

There are three that I personally would like to talk about: the European Social Charter, the European Convention on Establishment and the Convention on the Equivalence of Diplomas.

The first is complementary, in the economic and social fields, to the European Convention on Human Rights. It defines social rights, that is to say, the rights essential for leading the kind of life proper to a democratic society, and for the first time it makes an effort to see that through international supervision these rights are respected on a European scale.

The second expresses the concern of us all for greater mobility and more equality between Europeans, that is, between people who share a common ideal. That convention in fact ensures equality between all the nationals of the contracting states, both in the enjoyment and exercise of their civil rights and in safeguarding them.

The third is designed to ensure greater possibility of exchange at educational and teaching level. This is fundamental, because although our generation wants to build Europe, the full weight of that vast undertaking will rest on future generations. It is they who must be soaked in the European idea and branded by it.

Finally, and this is the last point I want to make, and it is something that we should not underestimate, there is the fact that the Council of Europe provides a European forum which, thanks to the high level of its debates, can form European public opinion. Because your terms of reference are so wide, you have been able to act and must continue to act as a sounding-board for European public and parliamentary opinion whenever a current political issue demands general discussion.

Having recalled some of the Council of Europe’s achievements, I now want to outline ways in which co-operation could be established between your organisation and the European union still in embryo.

First of all, I think we must realise that the two organisations are pursuing common objectives. There can be no question of antagonism or rivalry because one or other of them wants closer union between its Members or has the safeguarding of democratic freedoms as its ideal. I subscribe without reserve to the statement by your Rapporteur, Mrs Gradin, that “the first objective of European policy remains to maintain and further closer cohesion amongst all the democratic states of Europe”.

Certainly there are differences. The first concerns our final objective. As your President, Mr Czernetz, said, the Council of Europe can only promote functional unity in various forms, but the ambition of the European Communities, through the supranational integration of the Six, now the Nine, is to create a common economy and a political union. There are also differences as regards means. You are an institution for co-operation, whereas the European Communities are among the so-called integrating bodies. Finally, in the strictly arithmetical field – and that must not be ignored – the European Communities consist of nine states and the Council of Europe of eighteen – tomorrow nineteen.

I would like to take this opportunity of offering my most sincere congratulations to the Portuguese Government which is declaring its wish to participate from now on in the building of a democratic Europe.

But our similarities and our differences, far from causing rivalry or antagonism, should on the contrary make us complementary to each other and provide a basis for co-operation between us. Such co-operation should be twofold: first of all by means of the links which can be forged between the Communities and some Council of Europe states which do not belong to them; then by further clarifying relations between the Communities and the Council of Europe as such.

So far as the relations between the Communities and some Council of Europe states are concerned, no one can fail to be aware that the European Communities have a variety of external co-operation arrangements: trade agreements, association agreements, preferential agreements, and so on.

Undoubtedly, association is the closest form of such co-operation. It has, among other things, made it possible for several Council of Europe states to forge special links with the Communities. Here I should like to remind you of what I said in my report and what my compatriot Mr Leynen stressed in his introduction. I wrote,

“We must pay particular attention to those European countries which have a democratic system similar to ours. We should establish relations with them which make it possible to take account of their interests and their points of view when formulating the union’s political decisions.”

And if I added that: “the habit of such co-operation will, in due course, facilitate the accession of those states wishing to join”, it was not because I considered association as a transitory phase necessarily leading to accession.

I realise that some states do not want to compromise their neutrality by acceding to something that involves a political commitment. For them, association or some other form of co-operation should provide an adequate framework for special relations with the European union. At that level, the Council of Europe could make itself even more effective by acting as the link between the union and the other countries, and that would, in fact, be quite in line with its mission.

Now, regarding relations between the two organisations, in my view there are four ideas which should form the basis of our consideration and action.

The first thing that should be done is to delimit the respective functions of each to the greatest possible extent. There are matters which, because of their nature, their character or their extent, are more effectively dealt with either by the Nine or the Eighteen or Nineteen. In principle, these problems should be dealt with where they arise and their solution should be sought where it can be most complete and effective. There are also problems which extend beyond the European framework and do not lie within out respective competences. It was what caused you very wisely to recognise, apropos of international terrorism, that in view of the world-wide nature of the problem, there was no satisfactory long-term solution except on a world scale.

This desire to define our respective competences, which should make it possible to avoid duplication and to ensure greater rationalisation of our efforts to unify Europe, about which we should be very pleased, led you to adopt a medium-term plan which defines the fields particularly appropriate for the activities of the Council of Europe.

But there are and always will be fields in which we compete. This is quite legitimate when the aims of the European Communities and the Council of Europe are specific in character. But care must be taken, by means of reciprocal information, to ensure that the solutions adopted in these competing fields are not in fundamental contradiction, at least so far as principle is concerned.

In the second place, if there is to be a closer link between our two organisations, participation by the European Communities as such and tomorrow by the union in certain Council of Europe conventions must not be ruled out. A start seems to have been made in this direction in that, after long negotiation, the Council of Ministers of the Community and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe have agreed on a formula for participation by the European Economic Community in a Council of Europe Convention for the Protection of International Watercourses against Pollution.

It is also possible to imagine that, in some fields, common action might be undertaken in the form of setting up specialised authorities, institutions or agencies. This would in fact be a return, as they say, to where we came in, because it was your Assembly which, in 1949, proposed the creation of “specialised authorities” whose functions would be limited to certain strictly defined sectors.

Finally, while keeping the machinery for liaison between the Council of Europe and the European union, we must think of ways of strengthening and developing it. In this context, we may be entitled to wonder just how useful the Joint Meeting between the two Assemblies and the report presented annually to the Committee of Ministers are. I think we shall have to revise modes of co-operation that are more permanent and, above all, that are situated at the planning stage.

I want to conclude by saying that, in connection with the report on European union, your President has stated quite plainly that the eighteen member states of the Council of Europe and all the Representatives at the Parliamentary Assembly – those of the Nine as well as those of the other member states – unreservedly support any action which will strengthen the Community. We members of the Council of Europe Assembly believe, he said, that the European Community should progress and succeed; that is in the interests of all.

I am delighted that you have such a far-sighted and favourable attitude to the continued integration of the Nine. That should not sound the knell of the Council of Europe for, as I think I have shown, it still has a great many tasks to perform, the first being to make itself the rallying-ground for the whole European democratic family, with “the human being” as the centre of its preoccupations.

You therefore have a tremendous future before you, and your responsibility remains great in a world in which it has been said that there are still two dozen democracies.

You must make yourselves the favoured meeting-place of all the European democracies who together must assume their common responsibilities vis-à-vis the world. Our common devotion to democracy and its values imposes upon us co-operation for its common defence, for no one of our states in isolation will carry much weight.

The European union and the Council of Europe have their own functions, which are separate but complementary. Each in its own sphere of activity is working for the same ideal: “closer unity between the peoples of Europe”. (Loud applause)