Sixtieth anniversary of The Council of Europe
This morning I was asked to open the European Week at the Haagse Hogeschool. I asked the audience of about 350 students from all over Europe: who was born in 1989? And about 10 hands went into the air. And then I asked, who was born after 1989? And all the rest put up their hands. So, that puts it into perspective – these young people don’t even have their own memories of the end of the European divide.
Their Europe is quite a different Europe from the one I was brought up in, the Europe in which I trained, first, to be a soldier and, later, a diplomat. In this House you will probably no longer find anyone with personal memories of 1949, when the Council of Europe came into being. And the memories we do have may have faded. But why are they so important?
In 1949 the founding fathers of the Council of Europe were committed to the idea of ten states in Europe where democracy and the rule of law were the principle. This wasn’t seen as a given four years after the end of the Second World War, but as something which had to be cultivated. And the idea that citizens would have inalienable rights vis-à-vis the state was something that these countries held very dear. This principle had been disputed since 1933 in large parts of Europe, leading to the bloodshed of the Second World War. And then you had the other part of Europe, the other side of Europe on the other side of the wall. The wall had yet to be built - it was built the year I was born in 1961. But the Iron Curtain was there, and on the other side of the Iron Curtain individuals did not have rights. Individual rights were always subject to the interests of the state or the party, which could take them away on a whim or whenever anyone in the party thought it necessary.
This is how the Council of Europe and its foundations came into being, in an ideological confrontation between capitalism and freedom of democracy, on the one hand, and Communism and oppression, on the other. Since 1989 we have done away with that contradiction, with the dichotomy in world affairs which then ruled the world. But by no means did it lead to the end of history, as Fukuyama would have had us believe in those years after 1989. Looking back now, we can say that another confrontation has replaced the ideological confrontation. And it is based on identity. In the 1990s I was fortunate enough to work with Max van der Stoel when he was High Commissioner on National Minorities. The emergence of this new confrontation became especially clear after the infamous speech delivered by Milosevic in Kosovo. Milosevic discovered the incredible power of confrontation between identities as a political tool. He used this to hold on to power, and hundreds of thousands of people suffered and died as a result.
If you look at European society today, you will see that confrontation between identities is an element of all societies. Since 1989 we’ve put a lot of energy into examining confrontations in the East because we understand that, if unchallenged, they can lead to bloodshed – and sometimes they have done. We had not anticipated that the same would happen on this side of the former Iron Curtain. But I’m afraid to say that it has. The idea that confrontations between religions and identities, ethnicities and cultures, is part of the fight for survival and for dominance in any society is extremely destructive. It is a part of European history which we had hoped to banish to the past. But because it is human nature to forget one’s history if it happened long ago, we are repeating something we should be able to tackle with the instruments we have put in place. I put so much emphasis on this because I want to state very clearly that the Council of Europe is not an instrument of the West educating the East, but an instrument of the international community, of Europe as a whole. It allows individual citizens to claim their individual, inalienable rights vis-à-vis the authorities that have power over them.
That is its basis. And looking back at 60 years of the Council of Europe and 50 years of the Court the most important lesson is that, if you want to tackle these elements, these dark sides of human nature – because it’s all part of human nature – you need legal instruments. You need legal enforcement and you need rules that can be applied and enforced at local, national and international level. And it is often very tedious, difficult, invisible work. Because it is so much easier to make sweeping statements about human rights, and the rights of minorities, than it is to actually go into the nitty-gritty of legal systems and laws. Laws which can discriminate, and which are sometimes very carefully drafted so that nobody would understand unless they closely analysed them. It is important that today we can say that every individual citizen in Europe – 800 million people – can take their authorities to court in Strasbourg if they think that their personal rights have been infringed.
Now, where does this leave us with the Council of Europe? There are a great many initiatives to reinvigorate the position of the Council and I think it’s only fair to say - and let’s be honest about this - that the Council of Europe is far more popular and far better acknowledged in newly freed European countries than it is in the countries that originally created it. We tend to see the EU as the better, more modern organisation. But I honestly believe that, given the challenges we see in all European societies, including my own, and given this identity-based confrontation which pops up now and then, the role of the Council of Europe in setting norms and enforcing agreements and norms is still of the utmost importance. We need to be far clearer about this in the political arena. In the legal arena things are working quite well, although I think that the overburdening of the Court is a serious problem and we need to do more to help the Court solve that. I also believe there is room for improvement in the position of judges. We’ll try to work on that. But the most important thing is making a clear commitment, at national level, to the Council of Europe’s mission. And to the importance of the Council in the national domain as far as the rights of individuals vis-à-vis the authorities are concerned. This also means sometimes having to accept that, even though you might think you have things in order in the Netherlands, the Court, or other authorities, will tell you that there is room for improvement. And instead of going into defensive mode in response, we should try to acknowledge that, yes, in our country things could be improved in this or that area: due process, treatment of prisoners etcetera. I do accept that criticism, and we will act upon it.
Finally, Mr Chairman, I would like to reiterate that if we want human rights and the rights of individuals to be strong and to get stronger, not just in the whole Council of Europe area but in the EU, too, we will have to implement some of the recommendations of the Juncker report regarding cooperation between the EU and the Council. To each his own. To each his own speciality, expertise and legal basis. But operating in close cooperation at the service of our citizens. At the service of the many people in difficult situations all across the EU and Council of Europe countries, particularly those citizens belonging to national or other minorities such as Roma and Sinti.
Thank you.