Parliamentary Assembly

Mr President, Secretary General, members, it is quite moving for me to address you because I have known the Council of Europe for a good many years. I have never been a member of the Assembly, but that will no doubt come one day. As a law student here in Strasbourg, I followed the work of the Council of Europe most eagerly. In the second half of the 1970s, the Council of Europe was epitomised by the great assembly that met here in Strasbourg, as it does today. And as a law student, I was privileged to attend lectures by an eminent professor of international law, who urged us to follow the work of the Parliamentary Assembly, or the Consultative Assembly as it was known then.

There is not a nook or cranny in the Council of Europe library that I do not know, as I used to spend hours poring over the Parliamentary Assembly’s numerous reports at the time. I was an avid reader of the Council of Europe’s reports, and I still consult them today when taking stock of what the Organisation has contributed to the construction of Europe.

When I was a student in Strasbourg, the Council of Europe was not what it is today. If my memory serves me correctly, it had seventeen member states. There were parliamentarians from Luxembourg who regularly attended the Parliamentary Assembly’s meetings, and I was able to assess their performance outside of our own country when they gave addresses here.

Europe itself was a much smaller place at that time. When you compare the Council of Europe today with what it was in the second half of the 1970s and the people you see here today with those you saw here at that time, it gives me great pleasure to say that Europe has become much larger and more complete than it was. In 1947, when the men we now respectfully call the “fathers of Europe” came together in The Hague, Winston Churchill was at the very height of his moral and political authority. And in the face of the Soviet Union’s refusal to take part itself, or even allow the countries surrounding it to take part in the construction of Europe, Mr Churchill closed the discussions in The Hague by saying that the participants were beginning in the West a job which they would complete in the East one day. I can see what Winston Churchill’s wish has now become, here in the Assembly and at the Council. What might have been dismissed as a vision, a dream or an unrealistic ideal has been shown in recent years to have been profoundly realistic.

I very often read that the Council of Europe is searching for its identity and trying to find the way to a secure position in the future. I am a little surprised by the Council’s modest and timid approach, which has, in fact, marked it since the outset. At the very time when the Council of Europe has found its identity, it has set out looking for it. There is no need for the Council of Europe to seek a new identity, it only needs to remain faithful to what it has always been. Both the Council of Europe and the EU have been made up of a series of success stories.

The Council of Europe sometimes has difficulty defining itself in relation to the EU, which must realise that it does not represent Europe as it exists, as we love it and as we would like it to remain, namely the pan-European greater Europe embodied in the Council of Europe. The EU must not give the impression, either internally or externally, that it is an exclusive club for those who have made it. No, the EU must follow its own path, cherish its own dreams and become more integrated so that, post enlargement, it does not merely end up as a free-trade area, admittedly operating on a very high level, with a conceptual structure incapable of meeting the needs of a continent that remains highly complicated. The Council of Europe, which is also going through an enlargement process, will continue to follow its own path.

There are numerous areas where the approaches and ambitions of the EU and the Council of Europe should intersect. I will take the example of the sector where the Council of Europe has excelled itself, namely human rights. The Council of Europe has succeeded in imposing the rule of law on our continent. In the long term, the EU will be unable to escape the rules that the Council of Europe has established for Europe. By this I mean that it seems only normal – with regard to the European Convention and the Intergovernmental Conference to be held by EU member countries by 2004 – for the EU to accede to the European Convention on Human Rights. It must do so in its own right.

After all, it cannot be right for the EU to require applicant states first to ratify the European Convention on Human Rights, while itself avoiding the external scrutiny provided for under the machinery of the ECHR. It cannot be right for us knowingly to run the risk of conflicts that will be huge if we do nothing to prevent them. EU member countries are required to transpose the rules laid down in European directives into national legislation.

If a citizen brought a case in Strasbourg against his or her national authorities, a situation could easily arise where the Strasbourg Court ruled against a state for having failed to comply with the rules under the European Convention on Human Rights but the state was unable to execute the judgment because it was also subject to binding obligations in respect of the EU. Such a situation is entirely possible to the extent that the EU itself is not subject to the rules that derive directly from the ECHR.

We must not be afraid of taking this step, and I hope that the European Convention and the Intergovernmental Conference will do so, not for cosmetic reasons but for reasons of legal efficiency so as to prevent us ending up with two sets of human rights legal doctrine in a single continent. In so doing and moving forward hand-in-hand, if I dare say, in the same direction, we will perhaps avoid misunderstandings and disagreements about other subjects.

I note that the work of the recent Seville Summit has triggered a number of concerns within your Assembly. I have read your President’s speech and fully understand that some misunderstandings may have arisen. The fact is that the serious problem of immigration and, in general, of migration can be solved only at EU level. The EU gives the impression of wanting to focus solely on the consequences of illegal immigration, thereby neglecting the need for management of legal immigration. As a body that tries to be pragmatic and deal with short-term issues, there is a risk of the EU giving the impression of wanting to turn its fifteen member states into a kind of fortress.

Absolute clarity is essential here. The EU needs immigration and cannot simply close its external borders. All countries in Europe must continue to offer refuge to people from around the world who are persecuted on the grounds of their race, gender or religious or political beliefs.

The Council of Europe must take part in Europe-wide efforts to combat illegal immigration, which produces unhappy migrants in the countries of origin and unhappy immigrants in our countries. In this vast area, the EU and the Council of Europe have everything to gain from cooperating as closely as possible.

I could put forward the same arguments about international terrorism and its consequences. The events of 11 September 2001 have fundamentally changed the international situation, in particular with regard to combating terrorism. Nevertheless, we must not forget the reasons that can lead wrongheaded individuals to commit terrible acts like those that hit New York, Washington and Pittsburgh. Terrorism cannot be separated from its underlying causes. The EU and the Council of Europe must tackle them. Until such time as poverty is eliminated and large sections of humankind no longer live in misery, terrorists will always find fertile breeding grounds that enable them to commit despicable acts.

As a young student in Strasbourg in the past and as Prime Minister of my country today, I have always believed that the Council of Europe and human rights go hand-in-hand. In looking for a new identity, if the Council of Europe were purely to remain faithful to its own traditions of respect for the rule of law and human rights, while recognising the importance of local government and focusing on Europe’s cultural dimension, I believe there would be no grounds for concern about its future.

The EU is beginning its enlargement process, while the Council of Europe is on the point of completing its own particular enlargement process. The EU, whose political concept is narrower than the Council of Europe’s, must seek ways of combining its own enlargement with the enlargement of the Council of Europe.

In my view, the Council of Europe should convene another summit of heads of state and government before the end of2003 to celebrate, on a pan-European level, the reunification of European history and geography and the end of the terrible historic legacy that divided Europe into two blocs in the second half the twentieth century, seemingly forever. Admittedly, the world was easier to understand then. We knew which countries were “good” and which ones were not on our side. That Europe, however, was infinitely more dangerous than today’s! To avoid giving certain Council of Europe member states the impression that they have been excluded from the EU for good, Council of Europe heads of state and government should meet at the end of 2003 to celebrate the tremendous progress we have seen in Europe over the last fifteen years.

If the Council of Europe remains faithful to its most noble traditions and continues to cherish ambitions that are not at odds with those of the EU, it will enable Europe’s people to love their continent – as, indeed, it has always done.