The first steps towards European unity in the aftermath of World War II were taken at the Hague Congress in May 1948. Under the chairmanship of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, representatives from 16 countries met to lay the foundations for a European Union, a consultative assembly and a European Court of Human Rights.


One year later, in May 1949, the Council of Europe was founded in London. The new organisation was signed into existence by ten states: Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Today, the Council of Europe consists of 47 member states. The most recent member is Montenegro.

The President of the French National Assembly, Edouard Herriot, opened the first meeting of the Consultative Assembly (later to become the Parliamentary Assembly) on August 10 1949 at the University of Strasbourg. The Belgian diplomat Paul Henri Spaak was unanimously voted as the first President of the Assembly. Spaak was widely recognised as one of the architects of European and transatlantic co-operation.


Alongside the Parliamentary Assembly, the Committee of Ministers is the second central organ of the Council of Europe. As a rule, this body usually comprises the Foreign Ministers of each member state. The chair of the committee rotates on a six-month basis, and is currently held by Slovenia.

Promoting human rights

From the start, the statutory aim of the Council of Europe has been "to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles which are their common heritage and facilitating their economic and social progress."

In the main this has meant promoting peaceful co-existence, human rights, pluralistic democracy and the rule of law.

As the first comprehensive western European institution, the Council of Europe was designed as an instrument for mutual economic, legal, social and cultural agreements and as a platform for debate. The main focus of the Council of Europe's work today is in the field of human rights and the promotion of democracy.

Among the early examples of the work of the Council of Europe was the adoption on November 1950 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (also called the European Convention on Human Rights or ECHR). Another of the organisation's objectives was to provide guidelines for a democratic Europe.

A true pan-European organisation

Initially, it was an exclusive club consisting of democracies from Western Europe, but after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the Council became a comprehensive European committee to which every European state, with the exception of Belarus, belongs.

Furthermore, non-European countries such as Israel, Mexico and the US have observer status. And the initiative for the founding of the Council 60 years came from the United States.


Still today, the real meaning and strength of the Council of Europe comes from its all-encompassing membership. Turkey, for example has been a member of the Council since 1949, but is still waiting to join the EU.

The Council of Europe may use the same flag and hymn as the EU – in fact the European Union adopted its symbols from the Council – but the two do not work together on an institutional level.

Without the Council of Europe, European unity would be almost unimaginable. A further founding function of the organisation was to include Germany in the post-war European order. It was the Council that worked to change Germany's status as an occupied territory, and offered the young Federal Republic of Germany its first place in an international forum.

Author: Daniel Scheschkewitz (rt)
Editor: Michael Lawton