Editing Council of Europe (section)

== History ==

[[File:Palais Universitaire de Strasbourg-10 août 1949.jpg|thumb|upright|Plaque commemorating the first session of the Council of Europe Assembly at [[Palais Universitaire, Strasbourg|Strasbourg University]]]]

=== Founding ===

In a speech in 1929, French Foreign Minister [[Aristide Briand]] floated the idea of an organisation which would gather European nations together in a "federal union" to resolve common problems.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://fresques.ina.fr/jalons/fiche-media/InaEdu02042/discours-d-aristide-briand-devant-la-sdn-du-7-septembre-1929-audio.html |title=Lumni &#124; Enseignement – Discours d'Aristide Briand devant la SDN du 7 septembre 1929 |publisher=Fresques.ina.fr |trans-title=Lumni &#124; Teaching – Speech by Aristide Briand to the SDN on September 7, 1929 |access-date=24 September 2020}}</ref> The United Kingdom's wartime Prime Minister [[Winston Churchill]] first publicly suggested the creation of a "Council of Europe" in a BBC radio broadcast on 21 March 1943,<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1941-1945-war-leader/national-address/|title=National Address|date=21 March 1943|website=International Churchill Society |author1=Pixelstorm }}</ref> while the Second World War was still raging. In his own words,<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1943/1943-03-21a.html| title = Post-War Councils on World Problems: A FOUR YEAR PLAN FOR ENGLAND by WINSTON CHURCHILL, Prime Minister of Great Britain, broadcast from London over BBC, March 21, 1943}}</ref> he tried to "peer through the mists of the future to the end of the war", and think about how to rebuild and maintain peace on a shattered continent. Given that Europe had been at the origin of two world wars, the creation of such a body would be, he suggested, "a stupendous business". He returned to the idea during a well-known speech at the [[University of Zurich]] on 19 September 1946,<ref name="COE_Churchill">{{cite web |url=http://www.coe.int/t/dgal/dit/ilcd/Archives/Selection/Churchill/Default_en.asp |title=Winston Churchill and the Council of Europe |work=Council of Europe: Archiving and Documentary Resources |publisher=Council of Europe |date=6 April 2009 |access-date=18 November 2013}}, including audio extracts</ref><ref name="ENA_Churchill">{{cite web|title=European Navigator (ENA)|url=http://www.ena.lu/the_zurich_speech-020100043.html|access-date=4 April 2011|archive-date=7 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110607160506/http://www.ena.lu/the_zurich_speech-020100043.html|url-status=dead}} Including full transcript</ref> throwing the full weight of his considerable post-war prestige behind it.

Additionally, there were also many other statesmen and politicians across the continent, many of them members of the [[European Movement International|European Movement]], who were quietly working towards the creation of the council. Some regarded it as a guarantee that the horrors of war – or the human rights violations of the Nazi regime – could never again be visited on the continent, others came to see it as a "club of democracies", built around a set of common values that could stand as a bulwark against totalitarian states belonging to the [[Eastern Bloc]]. Others again saw it as a nascent "United States of Europe", the resonant phrase that Churchill had reached for at Zurich in 1946.

[[File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F023908-0002, Straßburg, Tagung des Europarates.jpg|thumb|left|Session of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly in the former [[Palace of Europe|House of Europe]] in Strasbourg in 1967. [[Willy Brandt]], [[Minister for Foreign Affairs (Germany)|German Minister for Foreign Affairs]], is speaking.]]

The future structure of the Council of Europe was discussed at the [[Congress of Europe]], which brought together several hundred leading politicians, government representatives and members of civil society in [[The Hague]], Netherlands, in 1948.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=History – Language policy – publi.coe.int |url=https://www.coe.int/en/web/language-policy/history |access-date=12 February 2023 |website=Language policy |language=en-GB}}</ref> Responding to the conclusions of the Congress of Europe, the Consultative Council of the [[Treaty of Brussels]] convened a Committee for the Study of European Unity, which met eight times from November 1948 to January 1949 to draw up the blueprint of a new broad-based European organisation.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Robertson |first=A. H. |date=1954 |title=The Council of Europe, 1949–1953: II |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/755483 |journal=The International and Comparative Law Quarterly |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=404–420 |doi=10.1093/iclqaj/3.3.404 |jstor=755483 |issn=0020-5893}}</ref>

There were two competing schools of thought: some favoured a classical international organisation with representatives of governments, while others preferred a political forum with parliamentarians. Both approaches were finally combined through the creation of a Committee of Ministers (in which governments were represented) and a Consultative Assembly (in which parliaments were represented), the two main bodies mentioned in the Statute of the Council of Europe. This dual intergovernmental and inter-parliamentary structure was later copied for the [[European Communities]], [[NATO]] and [[OSCE]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=NATO |title=Relations with the OSCE |url=https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49911.htm |access-date=12 February 2023 |website=NATO |language=en}}</ref>

The Council of Europe was signed into existence on 5 May 1949 by the [[Treaty of London (1949)|Treaty of London]], the organisation's founding Statute which set out the three basic values that should guide its work: democracy, human rights and the rule of law.<ref>{{Cite web |title=About the Council of Europe |url=https://training.itcilo.org/actrav_cdrom1/english/global/law/coeint.htm |access-date=12 February 2023 |website=training.itcilo.org}}</ref> It was signed in London on that day by ten states: [[Belgium]], [[Denmark]], [[France]], [[Republic of Ireland|Ireland]], [[Italy]], [[Luxembourg]], the [[Netherlands]], [[Norway]], [[Sweden]] and the [[United Kingdom]], though [[Turkey]] and [[Greece]] joined three months later. On 10 August 1949, 100 members of the council's Consultative Assembly, parliamentarians drawn from the twelve member nations, met in Strasbourg for its first plenary session, held over 18 sittings and lasting nearly a month. They debated how to reconcile and reconstruct a continent still reeling from war, yet already facing a new East–West divide, launched the radical concept of a trans-national court to protect the basic human rights of every citizen, and took the first steps in a process that would eventually lead to the creation of an offshoot organisation, the [[European Union]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Parliamentary Assembly – No Hate Speech Youth Campaign – publi.coe.int |url=https://www.coe.int/en/web/no-hate-campaign/parliamentary-assembly1 |access-date=12 February 2023 |website=No Hate Speech Youth Campaign |language=en-GB}}</ref>

In August 1949, [[Paul-Henri Spaak]] resigned as Belgium's foreign minister in order to be elected as the first president of the assembly. Behind the scenes, he too had been quietly working towards the creation of the council, and played a key role in steering its early work. However, in December 1951, after nearly three years in the role, Spaak resigned in disappointment after the Assembly rejected proposals for a "European political authority".<ref>{{cite web|author=Spaak |url=http://www.assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/Speeches/Speech-XML2HTML-EN.asp?SpeechID=271 |title=Speeches made to the Parliamentary Assembly (1949–2018) |publisher=Assembly.coe.int |date=11 December 1951 |access-date=24 September 2020}}</ref> Convinced that the Council of Europe was never going to be in a position to achieve his long-term goal of a unified Europe,<ref>Sandro Guerrieri, "From the Hague Congress to the Council of Europe: hopes, achievements and disappointments in the parliamentary way to European integration (1948–51)." ''Parliaments, Estates and Representation'' 34#2 (2014): 216–227.</ref> he soon tried again in a new and more promising format, based this time on economic integration, becoming one of the founders of the [[European Union]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://europa.eu/european-union/sites/europaeu/files/docs/body/paul-henri_spaak_en.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160924214047/https://europa.eu/european-union/sites/europaeu/files/docs/body/paul-henri_spaak_en.pdf |archive-date=24 September 2016 |url-status=live|title=European Commission: Paul–Henri Spaak: a European visionary and talented persuader}}</ref>

=== Early years ===

There was huge enthusiasm for the Council of Europe in its early years, as its pioneers set about drafting what was to become the [[European Convention on Human Rights]], a charter of individual rights which – it was hoped – no member government could ever again violate. They drew, in part, on the tenets of the [[Universal Declaration of Human Rights]], signed only a few months earlier in Paris. But crucially, where the Universal Declaration was essentially aspirational, the European Convention from the beginning featured an enforcement mechanism – an international Court – which was to adjudicate on alleged violations of its articles and to hold governments to account, a dramatic leap forward for international justice. Today, this is the [[European Court of Human Rights]], whose rulings are binding on 46 European nations, the most far-reaching system of international justice anywhere in the world.

One of the council's first acts was to welcome [[West Germany]] into its fold on 2 May 1951,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.cvce.eu/en/obj/accession_of_germany_to_the_council_of_europe_strasbourg_2_may_1951-en-24be5b53-aefd-4ac1-a21c-c8e514bd1a9f.html |title=Accession of Germany to the Council of Europe (Strasbourg, 2 May 1951) – CVCE Website |publisher=Cvce.eu |date=2 May 1951 |access-date=24 September 2020}}</ref> setting a pattern of post-war reconciliation that was to become a hallmark of the council, and beginning a long process of "enlargement" which was to see the organisation grow from its original ten founding member states to the 46 nations that make up the Council of Europe today.<ref>{{cite web|author=The Council of Europe in brief |url=https://www.coe.int/en/web/about-us/our-member-states |title=Our member States |publisher=Coe.int |date=5 May 1949 |access-date=24 September 2020}}</ref> Iceland had already joined in 1950, followed in 1956 by Austria, Cyprus in 1961, Switzerland in 1963 and Malta in 1965.

=== Historic speeches at the Council of Europe ===

[[File:Churchill Tha Hague 1948.jpg|thumb|[[Winston Churchill]]'s inaugural speech of the Council of Europe in The Hague]]
In 2018, an archive of all speeches made to the PACE by heads of state or government since the Council of Europe's creation in 1949 appeared online, the fruit of a two-year project entitled "Voices of Europe".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/Speeches/Speech-By-Country-EN.asp |title=Speeches made to the Parliamentary Assembly (by Country) |publisher=Assembly.coe.int |access-date=24 September 2020}}</ref> At the time of its launch,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/News/News-View-en.asp?newsid=7112&lang=2 |title=All speeches by heads of state and government to PACE since 1949 online |publisher=Assembly.coe.int |access-date=24 September 2020}}</ref> the archive comprised 263 speeches delivered over a 70-year period by some 216 presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and religious leaders from 45 countries – though it continues to expand, as new speeches are added every few months.

Some very early speeches by individuals considered to be "founding figures" of the European institutions, even if they were not heads of state or government at the time, are also included (such as Sir [[Winston Churchill]] or [[Robert Schuman]]). Addresses by eight monarchs appear in the list (such as King [[Juan Carlos I of Spain]], King [[Albert II of Belgium]] and Grand Duke [[Henri, Grand Duke of Luxembourg|Henri of Luxembourg]]) as well as the speeches given by religious figures (such as [[Pope John Paul II]], and [[Pope Francis]]) and several leaders from countries in the Middle East and North Africa (such as [[Shimon Peres]], [[Yasser Arafat]], [[Hosni Mubarak]], [[Léopold Sédar Senghor]] or King [[Hussein of Jordan]]).

The full text of the speeches is given in both English and French, regardless of the original language used. The archive is searchable by country, by name, and chronologically.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/Speeches/Speech-By-Country-FR.asp |title=Discours prononcés devant l'Assemblée parlementaire (1949–2018) – par pays |trans-title=Speeches delivered to the Parliamentary Assembly (1949–2018) – by country |publisher=Assembly.coe.int |access-date=24 September 2020}}</ref>