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25 April 1995
Doc. 7292
OPINION on the honouring of obligations and commitments by member states of the Council of Europe1
(Rapporteur: Mr SEITLINGER, France, Group of the European People's Party)
1. The Committee on Relations with European Non-Member Countries has been asked to give an opinion on the motion for an order on the honouring of commitments accepted by member states of the Council of Europe on their accession (Doc. 7225).
2. The monitoring procedure has been the subject of much comment since the adoption of Order No. 488 in 1993, notably from the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, the Political Affairs Committee, the Committee of Ministers and the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. The excellent report drafted by Mr Columberg (Doc. 7277) on behalf of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights marks an important stage in the debate, emphasising inter alia that the monitoring procedure had to be applied to all member states.
3. It is regrettable however that the report makes no mention of the role that may be played by the Committee on Relations with European Non-Member Countries in the monitoring procedure. The committee has gained a unique knowledge of Europe's new democracies and should therefore be involved in the new monitoring procedure which the Assembly is seeking to establish, and should be seized for opinion on the commitments made by Council of Europe member states which formerly enjoyed special guest status.
4. The committee has already debated the matter and, at its meeting on 2 December 1994 in Paris, all the members present signed the following declaration:
"Appeal on compliance with
commitments accepted by member states
of the Council of Europe on their accession2
a. To date, 9 special guests have become member states of whom the majority had satisfied the conditions of membership on accession.
b. For some, however, accession was granted in the full knowledge that conditions of membership had not been satisfied. In these cases the Opinion adopted by the Assembly imposed commitments to be honoured following accession. This approach was reinforced by Order No. 488.
c. Unfortunately, it is now clear that progress towards the honouring of such commitments has been less than satisfactory. Moreover, there is growing evidence that previous standards are being reduced, following accession.
d. Following the adoption of Recommendation 1257 on enlargement to include the remaining non-Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, whose applications for membership are unlikely to be satisfied without considerable compromise on Council of Europe standards, further consideration should now be given to a more effective procedure concerning the honouring of commitments.
e. Currently the rapporteurs of the Political Affairs Committee and the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights are retained to report on those questions which the committees wish to continue to monitor, whilst the Committee of Ministers has recently established its own approach. There is, as yet, no established procedure on how the offending new member states are held to account to the Parliamentary Assembly for their failure to comply.
f. In the light of this, the Committee on Relations with European Non-Member Countries is concerned that the enlargement of the Council of Europe will lead to further compromise of its standards of membership, which will lead to a permanent and irreversible erosion of those standards which were most recently confirmed at the Vienna Summit.
g. This is why the committee calls on the Bureau to bring forward a clear and strict procedure to be applied to those countries whose accession is linked to the honouring of commitments, to include:
- Retention of the three Rapporteurs
- Annual reports on the countries concerned to be made by the three committees for debate in the Parliamentary Assembly
- Six-monthly visits to those countries for discussions with Government and Parliamentarians, and to include fact-finding meetings accompanied by the press.
h. The committee calls on the Bureau to consider measures short of expulsion, such as the suspension of voting rights, to be applied to those member states which are found by the Parliamentary Assembly as failing to honour the commitments they have entered into.
i. This procedure will no longer apply when the three committees accept the Rapporteurs' recommendation that they are satisfied that all commitments have now been honoured."
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5. In the light of the different initiatives taken since then, it may seem that some of the proposals in the declaration no longer apply. It nevertheless remains indispensable, in the eyes of the committee, to retain the three rapporteurs on requests for accession, thus consolidating the procedure for monitoring the honouring of commitments.
6. It is for these reasons that the committee proposes the following two amendments to the draft order contained in the report of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights:
- in paragraph 6, after the words "all member states concerned", add the following sentence: "The Committee on Relations with European Non-Member Countries will also be asked for opinions with regard to the member states which previously enjoyed special guest status";
- in paragraph 7, delete the word "two".
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Reporting committee: Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights (Doc. 7277).
Committee for opinion: Committee on Relations with European Non-Member Countries.
Reference to committee: Doc. 7225 and Reference No. 1994 of 30 January 1995.
Opinion approved by the committee on 25 April 1995.
Secretary to the committee: Mr Dufour.
2 11. This appeal was signed by the following members of the Committee on 2 December 1994 in Paris: MM. Atkinson (Chairman), Pfuhl, Seitlinger (Vice-Chairmen), Brito, Büchel, Bugli, Columberg, Lord Dundee, MM. Figel, Gabrielescu, Ms Gelderblom-Lankhout, MM. Hegyi, Hint, Kitt, Liapis, de Lipkowski, Ms Ringstad, Mr Saudargas, Ms Severinsen, MM. Sole Tura, Toivonen.