Parliamentary Assembly

Mr President, members of the Parliamentary Assembly, I am pleased to have been given the opportunity to address the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, particularly in view of Malta’s current role as Chair of the Committee of Ministers. I believe that every healthy organisation benefits from a periodic reassessment of the function and the path that it has forged for itself. Today’s session provides the Council with the ideal opportunity to undergo this sort of self-appraisal and to ask, “What are we here for and how can we do it better?”

In Malta, we too are facing some similar soul-searching as we find ourselves at an historic crossroads. After my government’s successful conclusion of accession negotiations with the European Union at the Copenhagen Summit last December, the Maltese people will shortly set the seal, through a referendum, upon whether or not the future of their country lies within the European Union.

Our request for membership of the European Union was inspired by deep-rooted historical and economic factors. Membership of the EU is for Malta a natural continuation, and not a radical shift from its past. Indeed, it will enhance our commitment to those ideals, such as human rights, democracy and rule of law, which we have consistently sought to strengthen and uphold, and that have long inspired our participation in this Council.

In that context, therefore, with the imminent prospect of Malta’s EU membership in mind, I wish today to focus on a vital aspect of the Council of Europe’s role as a dynamic forum for promoting understanding and collaboration between its European Union members and non-members. This immediately provides a very clear reason why accession to the EU does not necessarily imply any lesser commitment to the Council of Europe. The situation is the opposite – Malta’s accession to the EU does not represent any abdication from the tasks willingly entered into many years previously through membership of the Council, but rather strengthens our commitments in this regard.

We intend to continue our contribution to the political construction of what has now come to be known as greater Europe – the Europe of forty-four states – as distinct from the Europe of the fifteen member states that may increase to twenty-five next year.

Nor can we forget the fact that there are areas such as human rights and socio-cultural development in which the action of the European Union is in no way taken to substitute that of the Council of Europe, even with respect to the relatively smaller circle of its members.

I shall address a few brief remarks related mainly to the issues arising out of our Council being the natural locus of co-operation between Europeans. The European vision towards which both the EU and the Council are oriented is neither that of an exclusive fortress, nor is it fuelled by any hegemonic ambition. On the contrary, it is rather that of establishing stepping-stones in an ordered sequence that are directed towards the system of a peaceful and progressive system of world governance.

Both the European Union and the Council of Europe ultimately exist to promote a form of globalisation that is free from any threat to the different and evolving identity of any nation. It is therefore one of our most immediate tasks to ensure that political dialogue takes place between the Council members that are also members of the Union and those that are not, in our effort to make a coherent joint contribution to the genesis of universal human solidarity. The Council of Europe is the ideal, if not the unique, context within which such a strategy needs to be worked out.

In the proposed constitution for the European Union being discussed by the Convention on the Future of Europe, there are references to the need to boost co-operation between the European Union and other countries that, for some reason, are unable to join. Such initiatives could yield some useful additional strength to an enlarged European network, particularly in terms of managing issues that cut across national borders.

The drafters of the EU’s proposed constitution seem to have in mind, particularly, such otherwise insoluble questions as the rational management of the resources of the Mediterranean Sea. Obviously, such matters can be handled only holistically within a wider framework than that of the EU. Perhaps they should also loom larger in our Council’s agenda, in the perspective of co-operative action between all our members and our neighbours.

I shall turn quickly to the socio-cultural dimension that has been the Council’s privileged area of activity ever since its birth. It has been observed that, in the recommendations of the working group on the external relations of the EU submitted at the European Convention, there was no reference to culture at all.

Such neglect is paradoxical in the present world context. All of us rightly reject the thesis of an inevitable clash of civilisations, but we would probably agree that the promotion of cross-cultural dialogue is one of the most urgent needs in international relations. It is central, not only to warding off war and terrorism, but to the development of the many-faceted knowledge society that has become the ideal of our leading economists. Even in the purely materialistic terms of pursuing our worldly interests, cultural exchanges have soared to the top of our priorities, particularly as in today’s economic reality knowledge is widely recognised as a fundamental resource for sustaining growth.

From its inception, culture has been to the Council of Europe what free trade has hitherto been to the European Union. There certainly remains ample room for more collaboration between the Council and the EU in the promotion of multi-cultural and inter-religious dialogue that is basic to the flourishing of all other types of exchange in the area. The Council can claim a relevant degree of expertise which has been built up over the years, despite perennially meagre funding.

The same applies to the social dimension. At the European Convention, a debate is under way on how what many call the European social model is best reflected in the proposed constitution. It is clear that a consensus is guaranteed only in relation to benchmarking, knowledge of best practices, scenario-building and similar matters. It would seem that the Council of Europe, with its years of experience of the European Social Charter as well as its much broader geographical scope and earlier policy of inclusion, could have much to offer in the way of collaboration. Challenges ahead are certainly not lacking – from dramatic migratory inflows to rapidly ageing populations – providing ample openings for dialogue between EU and non-EU Council members.

Thirdly and finally, the Council and the EU have already been engaged in some constructive, albeit sporadic, exchanges on human rights. It is not generally realised that the incorporation of the Nice declaration of fundamental rights in the proposed constitution of the EU will lead to enforcement by the EU courts only in cases of abuse by the European institutions themselves, or by states acting on their behalf. Ways are being studied, however, of enabling the EU to accede, as if it were a state, to the European Convention on Human Rights applied by our hard-working Court in Strasbourg.

Perhaps the biggest challenge presented by the Nice declaration is the wide expansion of social and economic rights that it contains – often, unfortunately formulated in a language that seems to defy enforceability. The whole situation surely demands from all in the EU and the Council a concerted effort to ensure that greater Europe has as coherent a human rights system as possible.

Until now I have concentrated mainly on the potential of the Council as a forum for communication between its EU and non-EU members, partly because the topic has been highlighted for discussion during Malta’s presidency of the Committee of Ministers. As I said earlier, it also inevitably features in the vision of a small country accepted for membership of the EU precisely when it is chairing the Committee of Ministers – as it happens, for the third time in its history and for the second with me as Prime Minister.

At such a juncture, one cannot help thinking that, precisely because of their dimensions, small countries can often contribute more effectively to the resolution of issues of a certain nature. Such issues require not so much give and take in counter-trading mode as the lateral pursuit of win-win situations. “Third ways” can sometimes be carved out in a way that enables them to transcend opposing positions rather than coming between them. It seems to me that on the chosen issue of renewing the EU-Council relationship in the light of the changes of both organisations, we have only just reached the stage of formulating the questions, as opposed to that of giving the answers.

Malta has belonged to the Council of Europe long enough to have an insider’s understanding of its workings, but it is still poised on the threshold of the EU. The process of initiation into a complex organisation inevitably takes time. For instance, ever since 1987, when I first became Prime Minister, Malta has been engaged in the process of really becoming part of the organisation of the Council. We then began incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights fully into Malta’s laws. Over the same period, Malta embarked on another long process to introduce and develop the concept of local government, resulting in the signing of the European Charter of Local Self-Government on 13 July 1993. Malta has also adapted its Criminal Code to introduce the concepts and devices needed to cope with such new phenomena as money-laundering, and, under the guidance of Council of Europe committees, sought to extend the application of the new legal prescriptions of the financing of terrorism.

We are now learning to differentiate between the tools that are needed when the origin of the funds is criminal and those that are needed when their destination is criminal.

Of course, we have not yet garnered such experiences in the context of the EU; but it may not be too early for us to begin forming at least a schematic picture of the EU’s relation to the Council. Essentially, it appears that the European Union is a cluster of nodes with particularly intense exchanges of information in certain respects, within the generally much looser but more extensive network that is the Council. Even such a crude model can provide a useful framework in which we can at least begin our search for answers to the questions that you have given me an opportunity to pose to you today.