Reply to Recommendation 1279 (1995) on the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference of the European Union

Reply to Recommendation 1279 (1995) on the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference of the European Union

Communication from the Committee of Ministers

Doc. 7915

22 September 1997

(adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 17 September 1997 at the 601st meeting of the Ministers' Deputies)

The Committee of Ministers has continued to study with care Recommendation 1279 (1995), as it indicated in the interim reply it adopted at the 550th meeting of the Deputies (November 1995), to which it appended the document entitled "Place and role of the Council of Europe in European construction, with the prospect of the European Union’s 1996 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC)" (document CM(95)128 revised 2) prepared by them and officially transmitted to the Chairman of the Reflection Group preparing the Intergovernmental Conference.

In this way, the Committee of Ministers, in line with the Assembly’s Recommendation (paragraph 10.ii.a), has been able to draw attention to the considerable acquis of the Council of Europe, both in the fields of justice and home affairs and in that of culture and education. Where the latter is concerned, the Committee of Ministers recalls the reply, adopted by the Deputies at their 596th meeting (June 1997), to Recommendation 1299 (1996) on European cultural cooperation: activities of the European Union and relations with the Council of Europe.

Moreover, since the adoption of the Committee of Ministers’ interim reply to the Recommendation under consideration, three informal Quadripartite meetings took place (the 8th, 9th and 10th of the series), bringing together the Committee of Ministers’ Chairman and Secretary General, on the one side, and the President of the Council and the Commission on the other, in Strasbourg (October 1996), Luxembourg (April 1997) and Brussels (September 1997).

This recent intensification of contacts at the highest level resulted, among other things, in the updating, called for by the Assembly in its Recommendation (paragraph 6), of the institutional arrangement concluded in June 1987, which is now supplemented by the exchange of letters of 5 November 1996 between the Secretary General of the Council of Europe and the President of the European Commission, in order to take account of the political and institutional progress which has taken place in each.

This exchange includes an invitation to the European Commission to participate in the work of the Ministers' Deputies, as well as their subsidiary groups including the Rapporteur Group on relations between the Council of Europe and the European Union, thus meeting the wish expressed by the Assembly in paragraph 10.v of its Recommendation.

Moreover, as recommended by the Assembly (in paragraph 10.iv), not only is the President of the Commission, or his representative, systematically invited to participate in ministerial-level meetings of the Committee of Ministers, but President Santer has been invited to take the floor at the Second Summit of Council of Europe Heads of State and Government (Strasbourg, 10-11 October 1997), as had also been the case with his predecessor at the First Summit, held in Vienna in October 1993.

The 9th Quadripartite meeting (Luxembourg, 28 April 1997) highlighted the importance of the Second Summit in giving, as is stated in the Press Release issued, "forty countries an opportunity of assessing what the Council of Europe had achieved in terms of democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and the contribution it could make to finding answers to the difficult problems that faced the States of Europe as the century drew to its close".

Also among the positive results of that meeting were:

- the agreement to continue cooperation, useful to both parties, on justice and home affairs (as called for in paragraph 10.ii.a of the Assembly’s Recommendation);

- detailed discussion of projects being carried out jointly to assist the countries of central and Eastern Europe, and of prospects for stepping up this cooperation (as called for in paragraph 10.vii of the Assembly’s Recommendation);

- reiteration of the importance attached by both sides to compliance with the commitments entered into by the Council of Europe member States (monitoring).

It is also recalled that the Presidency conclusions from the meeting of the European Council in Dublin on 13-14 December 1996 contained the following passage concerning the Council of Europe:

"The European Council believes that the Council of Europe has a crucial role in upholding human rights standards and supporting pluralist democracy.

It sees advantage in using to the fullest, in cooperation with other international institutions, the expertise and mechanisms of the Council of Europe to advance these objectives. The summit meeting of the Organisation in 1997 will provide a significant opportunity to review the progress made in these areas".

Where the Assembly’s concern (expressed in paragraph 10.viii) to promote the European Community’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights is concerned, the Council of Europe has been informed that this was not an option in the IGC (or the resulting Amsterdam Treaty) because of the lack of unanimous support from member States of the European Union.

The shared concern of the Assembly (paragraph 10.ix of its Recommendation) and of the Committee of Ministers for enhanced cooperation in the social field was addressed at the 10th Quadripartite meeting (Brussels, 15 September 1997), at which one of the main items of discussion was desirability of a contribution of the European Union to the implementation of some of the decisions contained in the draft Action Plan of the Summit.

Moreover, participants in the 10th Quadripartite meeting (see Press Release, Ref. 512 (97)):

- discussed the question of increased coordination between the Council of Europe and the European Union in situations of crisis, notably in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Belarus;

- examined means of reinforcing cooperation on assistance to countries of central and eastern Europe, reviewing the projects being carried out jointly and the prospects of new joint programmes; and

- emphasised the importance which the Council of Europe and the European Union attach to the fight against racism and xenophobia, and encouraged the development of close cooperation on this question.