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Opinion 297 (2019)
Budget and priorities of the Council of Europe for the biennium 2020-2021
1. At the time of its 70th anniversary,
the Council of Europe – and its Parliamentary Assembly – has been taken
hostage by a member State that has refused to pay its annual contribution
since 1 July 2017. The preparation of the Assembly’s opinion on
the budget and priorities for the biennium 2020-2021 is therefore taking
place in an extraordinary context. In view of the current financial
crisis, it is regrettable that the Assembly has no budgetary powers.
The Assembly therefore reiterates its request for a better institutional
balance between the Council of Europe bodies in this field. The
Assembly recalls that the Council of Europe is an international
organisation of a political nature, without an economic or gainful
aim, set up by sovereign States. The Council of Europe relies for
its funding on contributions by its member States.
2. The Assembly believes that the budgetary pressure being exerted
on the Council of Europe by a member State is posing a serious risk
that could destabilise the Organisation and deprive it of the resources needed
to provide all its member and partner States with the responses
enabling them to take up the concrete challenges and combat the
current negative trends.
3. The Assembly is aware that the internal political context
is unfavourable, on account of the attitude of the Russian Federation,
which, in using the budget as leverage to achieve its ends, is plunging
the Council of Europe into the most serious budgetary crisis in
its history and will thereby force the Organisation to take decisions
that are potentially irreversible and could weaken it at the very
time when it is celebrating its 70th anniversary.
4. The Assembly believes that the strategic choices of recent
years, which have given precedence to assistance and co-operation
programmes for certain countries and to certain thematic areas of
action, funded almost solely by extra-budgetary resources, have
in fact weakened the system of intergovernmental co-operation, which
is financed mostly by the ordinary budget.
5. The Assembly nevertheless still believes that it is this unique
system of co-operation between member States based on the development
of common standards, with conventions as the main source of the
Council of Europe acquis,
which forms the Organisation’s raison
d’être, as pointed out in its Recommendation 2114 (2017) on defending
the acquis of the Council
of Europe: preserving 65 years of successful intergovernmental co-operation
and Resolution 2277 (2019) “Role
and mission of the Parliamentary Assembly: main challenges for the
future”.
6. For seventy years, the convention-based system of the Council
of Europe has made a major contribution to improving the functioning
of democratic institutions in Europe, developing the rule of law
throughout Europe and protecting and promoting the rights of all
European citizens. The Council of Europe remains one of the very few
multilateral forums able to quickly draft international instruments
on a broad range of issues, many of which are among the most innovative
in the world, to meet challenges, respond to the concerns of European
citizens and protect their fundamental rights.
7. The Assembly provides vital input right from the drafting
process of these international instruments, as well as in ensuring
their efficient implementation. In many cases, it has identified
the areas where a need for new standards exists. It is therefore
important for the Assembly to maintain this capacity to react rapidly
and to support all stakeholders within the member States in implementing
them in an efficient way.
8. In this respect, the Assembly fully supports the initiatives
taken by the Council of Europe on issues related to artificial intelligence,
which occupies an increasingly important place in the functioning
of our societies. It calls on the Committee of Ministers to develop
co-operation in this area by drawing up a new legal instrument establishing
a framework for the design, development and application of artificial
intelligence in accordance with the standards of the Council of
Europe.
9. The Assembly welcomes the fact that gender equality remains
one of the top priorities of the Organisation and that the Council
of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women
and Domestic Violence (CETS No. 210) has become a global reference
text. It also supports the Council of Europe Gender Equality Strategy
2018-2023, which sets out priorities for action for the years ahead, including
achieving gender mainstreaming in all policies and activities of
the Organisation.
10. The Assembly, referring to its Resolution 2271 (2019) and Recommendation 2150 (2019) on strengthening
co-operation with the United Nations in implementing the 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development, welcomes the decision of the Committee
of Ministers to continue focusing attention during the next biennium
on this agenda, and calls for the enhancement of the Council of
Europe’s contribution, including by providing support to its member
States in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
11. Since July 2017, the Council of Europe has been confronted
with an unprecedented budgetary and financial situation linked to
the refusal of one of its member States to pay its contribution.
In this context, the Assembly calls on the Secretary General and
the Committee of Ministers to look for alternatives to the contingency
plan of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe for a budget
reduction of €32.4 million. In this regard, it recalls the idea
put forward by its General Rapporteur on the Budget to study the
feasibility of assigning the debt to a third party.
12. The Assembly notes that this possibility exists at international
level and has been used by various countries in the past. The assignment
of international receivables and the international assignment of receivables
are an established practice in international trade, governed by
the United Nations Convention on the Assignment of Receivables in
International Trade of 12 December 2001.
13. The Assembly regrets that this alternative has not been studied
and that a contingency plan has been drawn up to absorb the debt
left voluntarily by a member State (nearly 90 million euros at the
end of 2019). Implementation of the plan will mean that a significant
number of activities and whole areas of the work of the Council
of Europe could disappear, some of them irretrievably, for member
States. The human cost will also be substantial, with a departure
scheme for 250 people, or almost 10% of the Council of Europe’s
staff, which the member States will have to pay for.
14. The Assembly notes that the Programme and Budget 2020-2021,
which is being considered against a backdrop of ongoing uncertainty
around the payment of the Russian Federation’s obligatory contributions, nonetheless
shows a willingness to promote an Organisation that is increasingly
agile and confident in its know-how and expertise through reforms
aimed at improving its processes and working procedures.
15. In this context, the Assembly has taken note of the intention
of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe to rationalise
the programme of activities and to focus the activities on nine
operational programmes with a coherent set of sub-programmes. This
should lead to greater focus on the political priorities, improve synergies
and diminish duplication and will allow greater managerial flexibility
to implement the administrative reform measures.
16. The Assembly also notes that the Council of Europe may have
to part with staff members who have extensive knowledge and experience
of the Council of Europe’s fields of action and who would be hard
to replace. The human resources policy pursued in recent years (with
large-scale use of fixed-term contracts) undermines the transmission
of the know-how and acquis of
the Council of Europe since it excludes the preparation of a fresh
generation of staff members.
17. The Assembly therefore expects the Council of Europe to introduce
a staff policy that is sufficiently attractive to retain good candidates
and also offer them career development prospects, despite the current budgetary
uncertainties. In this context, the new draft People Strategy 2019-2023,
which has been the subject of a broad consultation process including
staff at all levels, should make it possible to meet the needs of
the Council of Europe while responding to the legitimate aspirations
of its staff.
18. The Assembly will agree to contribute its fair share to the
collective efforts called for, provided that several conditions
are met:
18.1. all alternatives to
cutting the Organisation’s budget are studied seriously;
18.2. all entities and sectors of the Council of Europe contribute
to the overall effort;
18.3. the efforts asked of the Assembly do not jeopardise its
ability to operate.
19. The Assembly calls on member States to make a larger contribution
to the funding of the Council of Europe. This echoes repeated calls
made by the Assembly in several budgetary opinions and in Recommendation 1812 (2007) on
the political dimension of the Council of Europe budget. In the
latter, it called on the Committee of Ministers to review the method
of calculating the scales of contributions to give greater weight
to gross domestic product and to set minimum scales for member States’
contributions to cover at least the administrative cost of a judge
at the European Court of Human Rights.
20. The Assembly, referring to its Opinion 288 (2015) on the budget
and priorities of the Council of Europe for the biennium 2016-2017,
stresses not only the importance of voluntary contributions but
also the danger they may create concerning the financial balance
of the Council of Europe. That is why the Assembly looks favourably
on the idea of creating a fund to receive voluntary contributions
for the ordinary budget, which represents the lifeblood of the Organisation.
It hopes that such a fund will be set up rapidly.
21. The Assembly believes that a minimum contribution to the ordinary
budget must be paid by each member State to cover the annual budgetary
cost of a judge at the European Court of Human Rights, an administrative
officer and an assistant working full time, as well as the annual
administrative expenses pertaining to their work and presence in
Strasbourg.
22. In Recommendation 2124
(2018) “Modification of the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure:
the impact of the budgetary crisis on the list of working languages
of the Assembly”, the Assembly suggested that the Committee of Ministers
take several decisions of a budgetary and financial nature, in particular
regarding the opening of an obligatory reserve account funded by
all or a substantial share of the unspent balance recorded at the
close of each financial year or biennium. This is a call which the
Assembly has made repeatedly in opinions on the Council of Europe
Programme and Budget (Opinions
268 (2008), 279
(2010) and 281
(2011) in particular).
23. With reference to Opinion 294
(2017) on the budget and priorities of the Council of
Europe for the biennium 2018-2019, the Assembly calls on the Committee
of Ministers to return to real growth in the Council of Europe’s
budget in order to enhance the Organisation’s operational capacity.
In this connection, it greatly regrets that the request to return
to zero real growth which the Secretary General made for the 2018-2019 biennium
was turned down because of the refusal of two of the 47 States represented
in the Committee of Ministers. As the Financial Regulations provide
for the budget to be adopted by a two-thirds majority, the Assembly
is surprised that the member States which support the return to
zero real growth have not insisted further.
24. The Assembly will proceed during its June 2019 part-session
to the election of a new Secretary General of the Council of Europe
to take up office on 1 October 2019 for a five-year term. The Assembly
therefore calls on the Committee of Ministers to make a firm commitment
to ensure real budget growth for the Council of Europe for five
years or at least zero real growth to take account of inflation.
It considers that such a decision would be a clear sign of support
from the member States to the future Secretary General, giving the Organisation
a more stable budgetary framework for the five years of his or her
mandate.
25. Finally, the Assembly welcomes the decisions adopted by the
Committee of Ministers at its 129th Session (Helsinki, 17 May 2019)
under the theme “A shared responsibility for democratic security
in Europe – Ensuring respect for rights and obligations, principles,
standards and values”, in which it recalls that “one of the fundamental
obligations of member States is to pay their obligatory contributions
to the Ordinary Budget, as provided by Article 38 of the Statute”.
Referring to its Recommendation
2153 (2019) “Role and mission of the Parliamentary Assembly:
main challenges for the future”, the Assembly invites the Committee
of Ministers to ensure that all member States comply with their
statutory obligations and asks it to implement Articles 8 and 9 of
the Statute of the Council of Europe (ETS No. 1) without further
delay if the Russian Federation still refuses to pay any of its
unpaid contributions.