Membership of the Council of Europe and the implementation of its standards are preconditions of membership of the European Union. If there were any doubt about that, the European Commission's latest monitoring report on Malta's preparedness for EU membership has reminded us of that fact.
"Malta should adopt a comprehensive anti-corruption strategy, taking into account the recommendations of the Council of Europe's Group of States against Corruption," it comments1.
The visit to Malta last month of the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights also took place in the context of Malta's forthcoming EU membership. Indeed, the political conditions of membership - known as the Copenhagen criteria, because they were adopted at the European Council held in that city in 1993 - require that an acceding state to practice democracy and the rule of law and protect human rights, in other words that it should conform to the Council of Europe's standards.
The relationship between the EU and the Council of Europe was at the centre of discussions at the latest session of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, held in Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, on November 5-6, which laid the foundations for future co-operation between the two institutions.
The Committee "emphasised that the pan-European dimension of the Council of Europe, its solid legal base, expertise, well-established mechanisms of co-operation and other comparative advantages should be fully utilised to achieve the strategic aim of building a Europe without dividing lines"2.
In the meantime, the relationship between the EU and the Council of Europe can be summarised by a simple equation: 45-25=20. Come May 2004, 25 of the Council of Europe's 45 member states will also be EU members. So they will constitute an automatic majority.
Most of the other 20 countries also look primarily to the EU as the leading institution on the European continent and fashion most of their domestic and external policies accordingly.
Of these 20 countries, three (Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey) are mainly interested in negotiating their accession to the EU. Another six (Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Andorra and San Marino) are members of the European Economic Area, EFTA, or some ad hoc arrangement with the EU.
The five Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro) have been promised EU membership some time in the future and are receiving massive financial aid from that source.
Russia is the only one of the remaining six countries that does not aim to join the EU. The Ukraine and Moldova have officially stated their own readiness to join, but the EU classifies them only as potential members of a ring of friends to whom it could offer everything but the institutions - that is, the closest possible relations short of membership3.
The three Caucasian states (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaidjan) still suffer from political instability and their commitment to democracy is shaky, to say the least4.
EU Constitution
Both the EU and the Council of Europe resulted from the drive towards European integration that followed the Second World War. The Council of Europe started in 1949 with a broad membership and a limited commitment towards closer political integration.
The EU took off in 1957 with six member states, greater powers and greater commitment towards economic and political integration. It has since grown in numbers and responsibilities.
The latest development within the EU is its expected adoption of a new Constitution in 2004/2005. The draft treaty establishing such a Constitution contains important changes and, if approved by the current intergovernmental conference, will have a strong impact on the Council of Europe's work.
The EU will formally acquire legal personality. The common foreign and security policy will be strengthened and put into effect by a newly created EU minister for foreign affairs.
Important areas of policy on justice and home affairs will lose their intergovernmental character and become areas of shared competences between the EU and its member states. These include the fight against crime, terrorism, corruption, trafficking in human beings and sexual exploitation of women and children, racism and xenophobia, judicial co-operation in criminal matters, harmonisation of criminal law and police co-operation.
The EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights will acquire binding force and the EU will be committed to acceding to the Council of Europe's Convention on Human Rights. This accession will ensure consistency between the legal systems of the EU and the Council of Europe as regards fundamental rights and introduce a higher degree of certainty in this field.
It will also ensure that the EU's Court in Luxembourg will benefit from the experience of the Council of Europe's Court in Strasbourg.
This will be a logical outcome of the slow, systematic process that has built up within the Council of Europe over the past half century. The treaties and conventions that have been laboriously concluded and ratified have contributed to the creation of an area of freedom, justice and security - much in the same way that the EU's acquis has contributed to the creation of a common area of freedom of movement of goods, persons, services and capital.
Sometimes the EU has built on the Council of Europe's own acquis; for example, from 2004 the EU decision on the European arrest warrant will replace, as between EU member states, the Council of Europe's conventions on extradition and the suppression of terrorism.
The latter will remain applicable to state parties that are not members of the EU, between them and in their relations with EU member states.
Interlocking institutions
Since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 and the freedom of the former communist countries of central and eastern Europe, the Council of Europe has played a pivotal role in preparing these countries for their accession to the EU, in particular through its help in building institutions to strengthen democracy and human rights, and in other facets of justice and home affairs. It still does so in the countries of the Western Balkans and those emerging from the former Soviet Union.
A number of programmes are financed jointly by the EU and the Council of Europe. For example, two EU projects against money-laundering in Russia and the Ukraine are currently being implemented by the Council of Europe. Another joint project helps Moldova to complete its democratic reforms and fulfil all its obligations as a member state of the Council of Europe.
The EU's future evolution calls for an imaginative approach to its relationship with the Council of Europe. One possibility is that the two institutions should set up an associate partnership, whereby matters relating to the monitoring of human rights and the execution of judgements in this area would be hived off to the Council of Europe.
This would ensure that the two organisations complement each other, rather than duplicate each other's work. At the same time, the Council of Europe's role in the new European architecture would be redefined and be recognised as the common reference point for European norms and values.
These matters, however, cannot be decided until the EU's intergovernmental conference has concluded its work, as was recognised by the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, in Chisinau, last week.
That meeting's discussions and conclusions, however, have formed a good basis for future co-operation between the two organisations.
References
1. See Comprehensive Monitoring Report of the European Commission on the state of preparedness for EU membership of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia, Brussels, November 2003, page 38.
2. See the meeting's final communiqué on www.coe.int.
3. See A Wider Europe - a Proximity Policy as the key to Stability, speech by Romano Prodi, December 5-6, 2002.
4. See The Caucasus - loss of balance, in The Economist, November 8, 2003, page 30.