1. Background
1.1. Origins of the report
1. In February 2009, Mr Dick Marty
and a number of his colleagues tabled a motion for a resolution (
Doc. 11831) concerning the lack of appropriate follow-up, by the
Committee of Ministers, to the work of the Parliamentary Assembly.
The matter was referred for report to the Committee on Rules of
Procedure, Immunities and Institutional Affairs, which appointed
Mr Serhiy Holovaty as rapporteur.
2. The year 2009 was notable for a number of episodes which left
members of the Assembly with the impression that the work and the
proposals they produced had not been given proper consideration
by the Committee of Ministers or taken into account in its decisions
on the Organisation’s political and strategic choices. There had,
moreover, been disagreement between the Committee of Ministers and
the Assembly over the election of the Secretary General, arising
from the interpretation of Article 36 of the Organisation’s Statute and
the rules on elections, each organ having a different understanding
of its role in this process. At the same time, there was a more
general debate, on the occasion of the Council of Europe’s 60th
anniversary, regarding the place of the Organisation in the current
institutional and political scheme of things; this debate highlighted the
need to establish a true inter-institutional and constructive dialogue
to ensure that the Organisation could operate effectively and harmoniously
in the future.
1.2. Recent developments in institutional
relations between the Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary
Assembly
3. It should be noted that ever
since the Organisation was founded, the two statutory organs have,
at regular intervals, looked at how to improve their working methods
in such a way as to make their complementary operations as effective
as possible, use each body’s skills and expertise to the best possible effect
and adapt these working methods to the ever-changing political and
social climate. In May 2001, for example, the Committee of Ministers
approved a document
which
advocated enhanced co-operation between the Committee of Ministers
and the Parliamentary Assembly, notably by improving communication
and the exchange of information, and by promoting informal dialogue,
transparency and understanding of each other’s views.
4. In 2006, the Assembly adopted a recommendation on the institutional
balance at the Council of Europe (
Recommendation 1763 (2006)). The very comprehensive report that accompanied the
recommendation (
Doc. 11017) pointed to a number of positives but noted the inadequacy
of the instruments available to the Assembly for influencing the
agenda of the Committee of Ministers and the lack of information
on the follow-up given to statutory opinions and the proposals contained
therein.
5. In its reply to the Assembly’s recommendation (
Doc. 11222), the Committee of Ministers restated its desire to
co-operate with the Assembly while retaining a flexible approach,
taking the view that there was no need to reapportion responsibilities
or codify existing practices.
The
Assembly and the Committee of Ministers then explored new ways of
forging a strategic partnership that would complement the formal
exchanges already held on the basis of the Assembly’s recommendations
and statutory opinions. Worthy of mention here is the joint interpretative
statement adopted in March 2010 concerning rules and procedures
for the future elections of the Secretary General (CM(2009)195 final),
a true inter-institutional agreement between the two bodies. The
Committee of Ministers and the Assembly also recognised the value
of holding regular informal meetings between the Bureau of the Committee
of Ministers and the Presidential Committee of the Assembly, the
first of which took place in May 2009.
6. Inter-institutional relations received a fresh political boost
under the Slovenian chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers,
and later the Swiss chairmanship. The document entitled “Enhanced
dialogue between the Parliamentary Assembly and the Committee of
Ministers”,
adopted
in September 2009, is the result of a joint agreement on proposals
to intensify dialogue and co-operation between the two bodies. In addition
to measures which will be detailed below, the Committee of Ministers
and the Assembly agreed to instruct the Secretary General of the
Council of Europe to draw up a report outlining further areas for discussion.
In June 2010, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe published
his report.
7. In June 2011, the Assembly adopted
Resolution 1822 (2011) on reform of the Parliamentary Assembly, calling for
the enhancement of inter-institutional dialogue, notably through
implementation of the measures set out in the Secretary General’s
report.
8. The purpose of the present report is to look at the proposals
mentioned above and flesh them out in practical terms, from the
point of view of the follow-up given by the Committee of Ministers
to the Assembly’s recommendations and statutory opinions. It does
not seek to update the report on institutional balance at the Council
of Europe, referred to earlier, though the rapporteur fully endorses
its conclusion that wide-ranging institutional reform would improve
the institutional balance within the Council of Europe and render
its work more effective. The present report concerns itself with
existing practice, where co-operation and efforts to improve working
methods should not only be continued but intensified.
9. On 12 January 2012, at the invitation of its chair, Ms Ellen
Berends, Permanent Representative of the Netherlands, the Ministers’
Deputies’ Ad hoc Working Party on Institutional Reforms held an
exchange of views with the rapporteur and the Chairperson of the
Committee on Rules of Procedure as well as the Assembly’s rapporteur
on reform of the Assembly and the future of the Council of Europe,
Mr Jean-Claude Mignon. The Ministers’ Deputies were asked to respond
to the proposals contained in this report. This exchange of views, which
took place in a very constructive and particularly cordial atmosphere,
provided helpful information for finalising this report.
2. Promoting active and effective
dialogue between the Parliamentary Assembly and the Committee of Ministers
under the statutory procedures
10. The Assembly adopts resolutions,
recommendations and opinions. Only recommendations and opinions are
forwarded to the Committee of Ministers for action. However, all
texts adopted by the Assembly, including resolutions, are placed
on the agenda of the Committee of Ministers (Ministers’ Deputies).
Given that normally the Committee of Ministers simply takes note
of resolutions, this section will look only at texts to which the Committee
of Ministers is required to respond.
2.1. Follow-up to recommendations
of the Assembly
11. The Statute of the Council
of Europe and its own Rules of Procedure require the Committee of
Ministers to consider recommendations (and statutory opinions),
but it does not have to reply to them. In practice, however, the
Committee of Ministers has chosen since 1963 to reply in detail
to the Assembly’s recommendations (
Doc. 1643, paragraph 8). Up to 1994, these replies by the Committee
of Ministers had to be adopted unanimously. In November 1994, the
Committee of Ministers decided that, in future, adoption of its replies
to the Assembly would require a two-thirds majority, on the understanding
that every effort would be made to achieve a consensus within a
reasonable period of time. In 2003, the Ministers’ Deputies gave
an undertaking that recommendations by the Assembly would, as far
as possible, receive a reply within a period of no more than six
months.
12. When deciding on the follow-up to be given – communication
to the governments of member States; communication for information
and/or comments to steering committees, committees of experts and
other appropriate bodies of the Council of Europe, where appropriate
for preparation of a draft reply – the Committee of Ministers takes
account of the Council of Europe’s priority areas of action, its
work, intergovernmental structures and available resources. In particular,
it seems that the Committee of Ministers has no longer been inclined,
for a few years now, to undertake any intergovernmental activity
not already covered by the Council of Europe’s work programme where
the Assembly requests it to do so in a recommendation.
13. Thus the “Revised guidelines for the reform and modernisation
of the Committee's working methods”,
currently under discussion
by the Ministers’ Deputies’ Ad hoc Working Party on Institutional
Reforms, seek in point 17 to set qualitative criteria for the content
of replies (which must be concise and result-oriented). A measure
of this kind should limit the Committee of Ministers’ frequent practice
of taking note of the Assembly’s proposals but never actually acting
on them. The rapporteur points out that the Committee of Ministers undertook
in 2010 “to give an early and substantial reply” to texts submitted
by the Assembly (see document CM(2009)142).
14. The rapporteur also notes that the Ad hoc Working Party on
Institutional Reforms, in the revised guidelines previously mentioned,
also suggested that the Chairperson of the Ministers’ Deputies and/or
the chairs of the rapporteur groups take the necessary steps to
ensure, especially in the event of disagreement on substantive matters,
that consultations with the delegations are held in order to move
the work in question forward (point 19).
15. The rapporteur notes that, on several occasions, committees
thought it vital to obtain more substantive replies from the Committee
of Ministers, precisely identifying the stumbling blocks to dialogue
and the obstacles to implementing the Assembly’s proposals.
16. During an exchange of views in February 2010 between the Ministers’
Deputies’ Ad hoc Working Party on Institutional Reforms and Mr Jean-Claude
Mignon, rapporteur for the Assembly’s Political Affairs Committee on
the future of the Council of Europe in the light of its sixty years
of experience, a number of permanent delegations, noting that some
issues debated by the Assembly were not part of the Organisation’s
priorities, stressed the need to link proposals to those priorities,
so that they would be more readily acted upon. Other delegations,
however, emphasised the important role played by the Assembly in
alerting the Committee of Ministers to new challenges.
Similar
comments were made by the Ministers’ Deputies during the above-mentioned
exchange of views with the Ad hoc Working Party on Institutional
Reforms on 12 January 2012.
17. Linking recommendations to the Committee of Ministers to the
Organisation’s priorities is one of the measures called for in
Resolution 1822 (2011) on reform of the Parliamentary Assembly (paragraph 5.1.1), which
confirms the Assembly’s intention to tighten the conditions for
submitting motions for recommendations and resolutions. More rigorous
preselection of motions by the Assembly's Bureau is recommended,
and committees are asked to provide information reports on some
issues, on which the Assembly would not need to vote. The report
on which the resolution is based clearly points to the need to reduce
the number of texts adopted, present more succinct and better quality
texts, and limit recommendations to the Committee of Ministers to
those areas where intergovernmental action is required.
18. The rapporteur hopes that the practice of filtering motions
for recommendations will be made a part of the Assembly’s working
methods and that this will impact positively on the quality of the
follow-up given by the Committee of Ministers. But the Assembly
must not abandon its power of initiative and must continue to anticipate
and drive forward ideas, because experience has shown it to be the
source of many major advances by the Council of Europe.
2.2. Examination of the Committee
of Ministers’ replies to Assembly recommendations
19. Regarding examination of the
Committee of Ministers’ replies to recommendations, the rapporteur
is gratified to see that this practice is becoming more commonplace.
The Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy
and
the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights already analyse
the Committee of Ministers’ replies to recommendations adopted on
the basis of their reports.
This
practice should be adopted by other Assembly committees, as indeed
Resolution 1822 (2011) suggests. This committee work requires rapporteurs to
be involved. It has also been suggested that examination of the
Committee of Ministers’ replies to recommendations should feature
at the top of Assembly committee meeting agendas. Proper dialogue between
the two organs would require more active follow-up by the Assembly,
which could respond to the reply given by asking specific supplementary
questions. This could be done via written questions to the Committee of
Ministers, or in a letter from the committee chair to the Chairperson
of the Ministers’ Deputies.
20. Resolution 1822
(2011) also calls on the Assembly’s committees to draw up an
annual report on the follow-up given to adopted texts by the national
parliaments and/or the Committee of Ministers and, where necessary,
to make a public statement when the follow-up is not satisfactory
(paragraph 5.2.2).
2.3. Consultation of the Assembly
regarding the negotiation of new legal instruments
21. The rapporteur notes that the
question of consulting the Assembly on new conventions and additional protocols
arises at regular intervals and is something on which there is still
room for real inter-institutional progress. The Assembly’s committees
have sometimes been critical both of the procedure followed and
of the content of the Committee of Ministers’ replies to their proposals.
In
Opinion 251 (2004) on draft Protocol No. 14 to the Convention for the Protection
of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, amending the control system
of the Convention, and
Opinion
270 (2008) on the draft Council of Europe Convention on Access
to Official Documents, the Assembly urges the Committee of Ministers
to submit requests for opinions on draft treaties to the Parliamentary
Assembly at least three months before the meeting of the Committee
of Ministers at which the text is to be examined and to take account
of this three-month period in the deadlines assigned to the steering
committees responsible for their preparation.
Two new opinions of the Assembly (
Opinion 276 (2010) on the draft Convention of the Council of Europe on
the counterfeiting of medical products and similar crimes involving
threats to public health, and
Opinion
277 (2010) on the draft protocol to the Convention on Mutual Administrative
Assistance in Tax Matters (ETS No. 127)) again emphasise the need
for the Assembly to be involved at an earlier stage when the Committee
of Ministers asks for its opinion on the draft of a legal instrument.
In
its
Opinions 270 (2008) and
277 (2010) the Assembly asks the Committee of Ministers to inform
it of the follow-up given to its proposals.
22. Treaties negotiated by the Council of Europe, frequently at
the Assembly’s instigation, are the base on which a common legal
area is being built in Europe and beyond, and they help to establish
a pan-European climate of trust. Proposals from the Assembly should
not be seen as obstacles to the negotiation of an international
treaty. They are, on the contrary, an extension of governments’
efforts to find an acceptable common position. Firstly, the Assembly
can free any political logjams by organising informal consultations.
Secondly, the quality of the
follow-up given by the Committee of Ministers to statutory opinions
will have a bearing on the efforts made by Assembly members to get
the text in question ratified at national level. The number of treaties
whose entry into force has been delayed because not enough countries
have ratified them shows that the process does not end when the
text is adopted by the Committee of Ministers.
23. Consequently, the rapporteur believes that the Assembly’s
statutory opinions could carry greater weight if the Committee of
Ministers were willing to involve the Assembly in the drafting of
treaties at an earlier stage and if it drew up the minutes of meetings
at which Assembly proposals are discussed along the same lines as the
minutes recording the discussions on proposals submitted by States
within intergovernmental groups of experts or committees.
24. The time allowed for consultation
and co-ordination arrangements
could be decided in an agreement between the two organs
along
the lines of the joint interpretative statement adopted in 2009
by the Assembly and the Committee of Ministers concerning rules
and procedures for the future elections of the Secretary General
of the Council of Europe.
25. Lastly, the rapporteur also thinks that the consultation procedure
might likewise be extended to include member States, in respect
of some draft recommendations.
2.4. Consultation with the Assembly
on budgetary matters
26. In 1953, the Committee of Ministers
allowed the Assembly to deliver an opinion on that part of the Organisation’s
budget which contains appropriations for the Assembly’s operations,
and in 1955 it allowed the Assembly to deliver an opinion on the
Council’s budget.
Every year the Assembly
adopts an opinion on the Council of Europe’s budgets and priorities,
along with an opinion (since 2010 in the form of a resolution) on
the Assembly’s expenditure.
27. In
Recommendation
1728 (2005) on the budgetary powers of the Parliamentary Assembly
of the Council of Europe, the Assembly expressed regret that the
machinery in place gave it no influence over the size of the Organisation’s
budget or the implementation of its activities. The Assembly believed
it should have budgetary powers appropriate to its status as a parliamentary
and political body of the Council of Europe, with the customary
prerogatives of a parliamentary assembly, in particular the power
to determine the amount of its own operating expenses in a procedure
to be agreed with the Committee of Ministers. It also asked that
the Committee of Ministers be required to consult it before setting
the size of the Council of Europe’s budget for the year ahead.
28. Albeit with limited room for manoeuvre, an informal mechanism
was set up to allow consultation between the two bodies. In 2010
and 2011, the Committee on Economic Affairs and Development’s rapporteur
on the Council of Europe’s budgets was invited to a meeting of the
Rapporteur Group on Programme, Budget and Administration (GR-PBA),
to defend before the Deputies the proposals upheld by the Assembly
in its opinion. The reports of the external and internal auditors
are also communicated to this group. Since 2009, the chair of the
GR-PBA has accepted an invitation from the Committee on Economic
Affairs and Development to take part, at the beginning of each year,
in a meeting where the budgetary prospects for the year ahead are
outlined. It will be important to maintain this practice in future
in the Committee on Rules of Procedure, Immunities and Institutional
Affairs, which has been dealing with budgetary and financial matters
since 23 January 2012.
2.5. Written questions to the
Committee of Ministers
29. Written questions do not count
towards the number of texts adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly, being
individual initiatives by its members, but it is worth pointing
out that the Committee of Ministers plans to deal with them in the
same way as recommendations, specifically with regard to the time
allowed for a reply; since 1984 this has been six months maximum.
In the revised guidelines for the reform and modernisation of the
Committee of Ministers’ working methods, mentioned earlier, the
Ministers’ Deputies’ Ad hoc Working Party on Institutional Reforms
wants the Committee of Ministers to give priority to questions of
relevance to the Council of Europe’s activities (point 20).
The suggestion is that if agreement
is not possible amongst the Deputies, their Chairperson should notify
the President of the Parliamentary Assembly by letter.
30. At the above-mentioned meeting with the Ad hoc Working Party
on Institutional Reforms on 12 January 2012, some Ministers’ Deputies
mentioned their reservations concerning the written questions procedure;
they considered that the way in which the replies to these questions
were handled necessitated the use of a cumbersome bureaucratic procedure
often ill-matched to the political relevance of the questions raised
by parliamentarians. The rapporteur would here like to point out
that, in national parliaments, questions are a standard instrument
of dialogue with the government as part of parliamentary supervision
of government activities and that they are viewed in the same way
in the Council of Europe. It is the task of parliamentarians to
convey the public’s queries and concerns, which are thus reflected
in their questions. He also believes that written questions to the
Committee of Ministers might serve more as an instrument of dialogue,
on condition that they are used in a streamlined manner, meeting
set criteria modelled on those applied to questions to the Chair
of the Committee of Ministers and other guest speakers, notably
regarding the subject of the question and its formulation.
3. Strengthening interaction
between the Parliamentary Assembly and the Committee of Ministers
in order to promote better follow-up to texts adopted by the Assembly
31. Whilst the work of the Assembly
as covered by this report is understood as texts adopted by the Assembly
and subsequently referred to the Committee of Ministers for action,
in the view of the rapporteur it is also necessary to look at all
procedures which might enable interaction between the two organs
to be improved. Optimum follow-up to texts
a
posteriori also depends on the preparatory work done
at the drafting stage.
Recommendation
1886 (2009) on the future of the Council of Europe in the light
of its sixty years of experience called on the Committee of Ministers
to “step up dialogue with the Assembly in all the ways that have
proved effective, such as the contacts between the President of
the Assembly and the Chair of the Committee of Ministers, the informal
meetings between the Presidential Committee of the Assembly and
the Bureau of the Committee of Ministers, the working contacts between
the Assembly committees and the Committee of Ministers’ rapporteur
groups”. Thus this chapter deals with the means of communication,
both official and informal, that exist between the two bodies.
3.1. Participation by the Assembly
in the work of intergovernmental committees
32. Under the revised general terms
of reference of committees,
all
Assembly committees have equal status when it comes to establishing
working relations with the organs and bodies of the Council of Europe. Use
should be made of this fact, so that Assembly rapporteurs can play
a greater role in the work of the various groups of experts and
steering committees, notably in the drafting of opinions on draft
treaties, bearing in mind that the terms of reference and internal
rules of most of these groups and committees already envisage a participatory
role for representatives of the Assembly.
33. The rapporteur notes that the responsibility which Assembly
committees have to ensure the appropriate follow-up to their reports,
and the fact that a rapporteur can remain responsible for monitoring
the action taken on a particular report during the year following
its adoption, should make for greater interaction between the relevant
working groups and committees of the two organs.
3.2. Liaison between Assembly
committees and the Ministers’ Deputies’ rapporteur groups
34. The rapporteur is pleased to
note that the level of each organ's participation in the other’s
meetings has intensified (see also the appendix to this report).
Particular mention may be made of specific meetings which gave rise
to constructive exchanges. Thus Mr Mignon, rapporteur on follow-up
to reform of the Council of Europe for the Political Affairs Committee,
took part on 25 February 2010 in an exchange of views with the Committee
of Ministers’ Ad hoc Working Party on Institutional Reforms. On
23 March 2010, Mr Omtzigt, Rapporteur for the former Committee on
Economic Affairs and Development, attended a meeting of the Rapporteur
Group on Legal Co-operation, where he presented the Assembly’s opinion
on the draft protocol to the Convention on Mutual Administrative
Assistance in Tax Matters. On 18 December 2010, the Working Party on
the Monitoring Process for the Interlaken Declaration met for discussions
with Ms Marie-Louise Bemelmans-Videc, Chairperson of the Sub-Committee
on Human Rights. On 8 November 2011, Ms Anne Brasseur, rapporteur
on the situation in Tunisia for the Political Affairs Committee,
was invited by the Rapporteur Group on External Relations to take
part in the discussion on the Council of Europe’s policy regarding
neighbouring regions. On budgetary matters, dialogue is routine:
Mr Erol Aslan Cebeci, rapporteur on budgets and priorities of the
Council of Europe for the former Committee on Economic Affairs and Development,
was invited to the meetings of the Rapporteur Group on Programme,
Budget and Administration held on 17 June 2010 and 17 June 2011.
35. The rapporteur hopes that this trend towards constructive
co-operation will intensify further in the future. In his 2010 report
referred to earlier the Secretary General of the Council of Europe
suggests that the chairs of the rapporteur groups should maintain
regular informal contacts with the chairpersons of the Assembly’s committees
and should attend an annual meeting together with the committees.
He also advocates continuing – and strengthening – the participation
of rapporteurs in meetings of working parties of the Committee of Ministers
and Council of Europe steering committees. At the exchange of views
with the Ad hoc Working Party on Institutional Reforms on 12 January
2012, the Ministers’ Deputies were unanimously in favour of further efforts
to develop this direct dialogue.
3.3. General rapporteurs
36. The Assembly’s general rapporteurs
might be tasked with promoting Assembly decisions on specific issues,
gathering information on them and reporting to the committees concerned.
They would also be able to forge working relationships with the
relevant subsidiary bodies of the Committee of Ministers (rapporteur groups,
thematic co-ordinators, working parties, etc.)
and
follow their work.
3.4. Joint Committee
37. The Joint Committee, set up
in 1951, is a statutory body linking the Committee of Ministers
and Assembly members. It has long operated on the basis of a regular
annual meeting. In 2004 it was suggested that it should meet once
during every part-session. But because the calendar of meetings
was set on the basis of part-session dates and not real needs, and
because the format was not suited to the discussion of certain issues,
both bodies suggested that the functioning of the Joint Committee
should be reviewed.
38. In fact, the work of the two organs is now co-ordinated by
the President of the Assembly and the Chair of the Committee of
Ministers, and by the Presidential Committee of the Assembly and
the Bureau of the Committee of Ministers, meeting regularly during
part-sessions of the Assembly.
39. In
Recommendation
1886 (2009) on the future of the Council of Europe in the light
of its sixty years of experience, the Assembly said that the Committee
of Ministers should “study, together with the Assembly, the ways
and means of making the Joint Committee a genuine forum for substantive
dialogue and effective consultation between the two organs, for
example by convening it only when necessary and at the level of political
decision makers”. The rapporteur agrees with the view, expressed
by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe in his report
referred to earlier, that the Joint Committee should meet only when
there is a real institutional need for it to do so, for example
to elect the Secretary General, the Deputy Secretary General or
the Secretary General of the Assembly. Its meetings need to be carefully
prepared so that it is a forum for constructive endeavour rather
than a platform for opportunistic statements. The Joint Committee
is also a unique structure in which all members of the Committee
of Ministers and all national delegations to the Parliamentary Assembly
take part on an equal footing. For this reason it remains a necessary
tool of inter-institutional co-operation within the Council of Europe.
40. At the exchange of views with the Ad hoc Working Party on
Institutional Reforms on 12 January 2012, the Ministers’ Deputies
unanimously reaffirmed their commitment to the Joint Committee as
a discussion forum and wanted to see a continuation of the regular
meetings held during Assembly part-sessions, with agendas carefully
prepared in order that substantive issues might be discussed.
3.5. Identification and co-ordination
of the priorities of future Chairs of the Committee of Ministers
by involving and consulting the relevant national delegations in
the Assembly
41. In establishing the priorities
of the Chair of the Committee of Ministers, account is taken of
the national agenda but also of shared concerns of the Council of
Europe’s member States. By virtue of their dual remit, both national
and European, national delegations are well placed to identify pertinent
issues and integrate at national level policies that are introduced
during their country’s chairmanship. As the Secretary General of
the Council of Europe proposes in his 2010 report, the government
of the country due to take over the Chair of the Organisation should
“consult the national delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly to
involve it in the work of setting priorities”. The minister responsible
and the national parliament of the country in question could hold
a debate on priorities before the start of the chairmanship, along
the lines of the recent debate in the United Kingdom between its
Minister for Europe, Mr David Lidington, and the House of Commons.
The future Albanian chairmanship has stated that it is pursuing
the same approach.
42. Moreover, at each of its part-sessions, the Assembly hears
an address by the minister for foreign affairs of the country holding
the chairmanship. It also holds a meeting of its Standing Committee
in the country which has just taken up the chairmanship, at which
that country's programme is presented. It would undoubtedly be helpful
and worthwhile if the same minister could also present an assessment
of his or her country’s chairmanship once it had come to an end.
3.6. Follow-up to free debates
43. In the framework of its reform,
the Assembly decided to introduce a free debate during each part-session,
in which members of the Assembly are able to speak on the topic
of their choice. The first such exercise took place during the January
2012 part-session. On that occasion, during their speeches, members raised
issues which undoubtedly would have requested a reply from institutional
bodies of the Council of Europe responsible for the relevant areas
mentioned. The Bureau of the Assembly therefore expressed the wish
that an informal procedure for following up free debates be set
up. The Secretary General of the Assembly sent some 20 letters to
these institutions, requesting their co-operation in this initiative
and inviting them to provide some answers to the questions raised.
4. Conclusions
44. It is in the very nature of
parliamentary systems to be based on an institutional balance between government
and parliament, a balance guaranteed by the existence of equal and
reciprocal means of pressure and action. Parliaments, vested with
legislative and budgetary powers and the power to supervise the government,
also constitute a driving force and offer a forum for public demands
and protest. It was this democratic model par excellence that inspired
the Council of Europe’s founding fathers in 1949 to provide it with
a parliamentary body that was a necessary complement, in terms of
action and reflection, to the intergovernmental body. It is this
feature of the Council of Europe that is its greatest asset. The
Assembly’s ideas and initiatives are vital to the Organisation,
but they cannot become reality without the support of the Committee
of Ministers. At a time when the Organisation has been undergoing
reform (structures and working methods) for two years, enhanced
dialogue between the two statutory organs and better co-ordination
of their work and positions are essential if the exercise is to
succeed.
45. This report contains a draft resolution and a draft recommendation,
each comprising a number of proposals for improving inter-institutional
dialogue. In particular, the Assembly is invited to develop working relations
with intergovernmental steering committees and groups of experts,
as well as with the appropriate subsidiary bodies of the Committee
of Ministers. Moreover, the Assembly committees are encouraged to
adopt good practice in their drafting of recommendations and opinions.
46. Finally, the document on “Enhanced dialogue between the Parliamentary
Assembly and the Committee of Ministers” said that the Committee
of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly should consider “establishing
an inventory of best practice” in order to ascertain how existing
arrangements for co-operation and informal dialogue might be improved
or extended. In the current context of the Organisation, that item might
be placed on the agenda, with a view to encouraging regular interaction
and more effective co-operation between the Assembly and the Committee
of Ministers. At the end of the meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies’ Ad
hoc Working Party on Institutional Reforms, on 12 January 2012,
it was agreed to continue discussions during 2012 in order to evaluate
actual implementation of the proposals put forward by the Committee
on Rules of Procedure, Immunities and Institutional Affairs.