What will the UK presidency of the Council of Europe bring?
by Martyn Bond
25 January 2012
Is the British presidency of the Council of Europe likely to produce any radical reforms?
The presidency of the Council of Europe changes in May and November, each year. It is usually a quiet transition from one member state to another, a task taken on with little publicity and sometimes little enthusiasm. After all, with 47 member states, the presidency comes round only once every 23 years, so no national administration has a useful memory of what it did last time to help inform what it ought to do this time. And the presidency of an intergovernmental body like the CoE, where every state has a veto, gives the chair little power to influence the outcome of meetings. Yet this November has seen a plethora of articles and programmes in media from the Atlantic to the Urals, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean - focussing on the United Kingdom presidency. Why is the UK seen as exceptional in the CoE?
First, the CoE – and, in particular, its European Court of Human Rights – could be claimed as a British idea. While the Second World War was raging, Churchill wrote about the CoE states that he wanted to emerge from the defeat of Nazi Germany. He chaired the Congress of The Hague, which intensified the political pressure for creating both the council and the court. And he, along with several other leading British politicians, many of them Conservatives, attended the first parliamentary sessions in Strasbourg. British lawyers drafted the first of the council's conventions, the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Second, political continuity in the UK puts it in a class of its own among the member states of the council. Only five governments negotiated the original treaty, in 1949, and four of those had been occupied during the war. Now there are 47 members, almost all of them rescued from totalitarian rule within living memory – and, some of them, only very recently. For all their faults and follies, Westminster and Whitehall are looked up to by the European political class with a sense of admiration, even awe.
But the British presidency is special for a more immediate and more newsworthy issue as well. Every political commentator knows that the two parties in the ruling coalition in the UK are divided over European policy. However, the ministerial speech in Strasbourg to mark the start of the British presidency disappointed those looking for cracks between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Democracy, human rights and the rule of law - and the rights set out in the ECHR – it was asserted, were common ground between the coalition partners. There are six tasks the UK government wants to undertake during its presidency. First, making the ECHR more efficient. Second, pushing forward internal reform of the council, in order to make it administratively lean - with a disciplined budget and a simplified work programme. Third, improving the council's work for democracy at regional and local level. Fourth, strengthening the rule of law in member states - in particular, by using the Venice Commission - the Council's advisory body on constitutional matters. Fifth, promoting an open internet with assured freedom of expression. And, finally, combating discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity - overcoming what the British Foreign Secretary said were "outdated prejudices".
But William Hague's speech in Strasbourg was also important for what it did not mention. Just a couple of weeks before he spoke, the UK circulated a paper outlining objections to the draft agreement between the European Union and the council on accession of the EU to the ECHR. Allowed by the Lisbon Treaty and encouraged by the CoE, accession negotiations had almost concluded before the UK threw this spanner in the works. Several issues - some trivial, some more fundamental – now need to be reviewed, with further negotiation among the 27 in Brussels before another round of negotiation in Strasbourg with the 47. Insiders suggest it may take even longer than the six-month presidency to answer all the questions that the UK raised. And it is there that commentators look for divergent priorities between the two parties of the UK governing coalition.
Reform of the court and of the CoE is a good thing, politically, in the UK. The first and main aim of the presidency is uncontested, even by some truculent Eurosceptic backbenchers. They would like to wriggle round some of the court's judgments, but human rights more generally are on a par with motherhood and apple pie. Tactically, however, the Conservative leadership of the coalition is looking forward to next May. It wants to make sure that the EU does not spoil the celebrations which the UK expects to hold at the end of its council presidency. It will matter less if Albania, which succeeds the UK in the chair then, presides over the accession of the EU to the ECHR a few months later, something the angry backbenchers dislike intensely. The UK will have delivered the six points Hague set out as his agenda. The issue of EU accession, left unmentioned, can wait for later.
Martyn Bond is visiting professor of European politics and policy at Royal Holloway, University of London, in the UK. His book The Council of Europe: Structure, History and Issues is published by Routledge
The presidency of the Council of Europe changes in May and November, each year. It is usually a quiet transition from one member state to another, a task taken on with little publicity and sometimes little enthusiasm. After all, with 47 member states, the presidency comes round only once every 23 years, so no national administration has a useful memory of what it did last time to help inform what it ought to do this time. And the presidency of an intergovernmental body like the CoE, where every state has a veto, gives the chair little power to influence the outcome of meetings. Yet this November has seen a plethora of articles and programmes in media from the Atlantic to the Urals, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean - focussing on the United Kingdom presidency. Why is the UK seen as exceptional in the CoE?
First, the CoE – and, in particular, its European Court of Human Rights – could be claimed as a British idea. While the Second World War was raging, Churchill wrote about the CoE states that he wanted to emerge from the defeat of Nazi Germany. He chaired the Congress of The Hague, which intensified the political pressure for creating both the council and the court. And he, along with several other leading British politicians, many of them Conservatives, attended the first parliamentary sessions in Strasbourg. British lawyers drafted the first of the council's conventions, the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Second, political continuity in the UK puts it in a class of its own among the member states of the council. Only five governments negotiated the original treaty, in 1949, and four of those had been occupied during the war. Now there are 47 members, almost all of them rescued from totalitarian rule within living memory – and, some of them, only very recently. For all their faults and follies, Westminster and Whitehall are looked up to by the European political class with a sense of admiration, even awe.
But the British presidency is special for a more immediate and more newsworthy issue as well. Every political commentator knows that the two parties in the ruling coalition in the UK are divided over European policy. However, the ministerial speech in Strasbourg to mark the start of the British presidency disappointed those looking for cracks between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Democracy, human rights and the rule of law - and the rights set out in the ECHR – it was asserted, were common ground between the coalition partners. There are six tasks the UK government wants to undertake during its presidency. First, making the ECHR more efficient. Second, pushing forward internal reform of the council, in order to make it administratively lean - with a disciplined budget and a simplified work programme. Third, improving the council's work for democracy at regional and local level. Fourth, strengthening the rule of law in member states - in particular, by using the Venice Commission - the Council's advisory body on constitutional matters. Fifth, promoting an open internet with assured freedom of expression. And, finally, combating discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity - overcoming what the British Foreign Secretary said were "outdated prejudices".
But William Hague's speech in Strasbourg was also important for what it did not mention. Just a couple of weeks before he spoke, the UK circulated a paper outlining objections to the draft agreement between the European Union and the council on accession of the EU to the ECHR. Allowed by the Lisbon Treaty and encouraged by the CoE, accession negotiations had almost concluded before the UK threw this spanner in the works. Several issues - some trivial, some more fundamental – now need to be reviewed, with further negotiation among the 27 in Brussels before another round of negotiation in Strasbourg with the 47. Insiders suggest it may take even longer than the six-month presidency to answer all the questions that the UK raised. And it is there that commentators look for divergent priorities between the two parties of the UK governing coalition.
Reform of the court and of the CoE is a good thing, politically, in the UK. The first and main aim of the presidency is uncontested, even by some truculent Eurosceptic backbenchers. They would like to wriggle round some of the court's judgments, but human rights more generally are on a par with motherhood and apple pie. Tactically, however, the Conservative leadership of the coalition is looking forward to next May. It wants to make sure that the EU does not spoil the celebrations which the UK expects to hold at the end of its council presidency. It will matter less if Albania, which succeeds the UK in the chair then, presides over the accession of the EU to the ECHR a few months later, something the angry backbenchers dislike intensely. The UK will have delivered the six points Hague set out as his agenda. The issue of EU accession, left unmentioned, can wait for later.
Martyn Bond is visiting professor of European politics and policy at Royal Holloway, University of London, in the UK. His book The Council of Europe: Structure, History and Issues is published by Routledge
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