- The Warsaw Summit's decision to have a closer co-operation between the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the EU is an important signal for the future of European institutional architecture, says the Norwegian member of the Committee of Ministers in Strasbourg. It is the Committee of Ministers that will lead the follow-up of the Warsaw Summit decisions, including the implementation of the Action Plan. In this interview, Mr. Torbjørn Frøysnes, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Norway to the Council of Europe, sums up his principal conclusions from the Third Summit and thoughts on the follow-up work that will be the task of the Committee of Ministers in the months to come.
19/11/2007 ::
QUESTION NO. 1:
Mr. Ambassador, what is your assessment of the Third Summit?
First of all Poland should be congratulated for the excellent organisation of the Third Summit of the Council of Europe. It was a magnificent event, and Poland was in every way a successful host country.
My authorities also share the general satisfaction expressed by other delegations with the political results of the Summit:
- We are pleased with the clear commitments to strengthen the European Human Rights system, and to secure that it will be well functioning in the future.
- We welcome the establishment of a European Forum for Democracy as well as a Centre for local government reform. This will contribute to promoting good governance at all levels in Europe.
- The Summit gave new directions to building understanding and trust through inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue. The new co-ordinator for inter-cultural dialogue will have important tasks in co-ordinating the different activities and practical programmes of the Organisation in these fields. Likewise, we welcome the agreement to promote intercultural programmes and exchanges in the educational system, within Europe and with neighbouring countries.
- The fight against terrorism and organised crime has been strengthened. We also attach great importance to the fact that the problems of everyday violence and domestic violence now have been dealt with at the highest political level. We should now work actively to develop practical and effective measures that can help in the fight against these challenges.
- We welcome the strong will to develop a Europe of human values, and the particular attention and priority to supporting weaker groups in our societies.
- Norway in particular welcomes the important signals from the Summit to strengthen the relations between the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the EU. We hope that the processes foreseen will improve complementarity in the European architecture.
QUESTION NO. 2:
The Committee of Ministers is now embarking on the task of following up the Third Summit. What are in your view, Mr. Ambassador, the critical factors of the follow-up?
As to the follow-up work, we see the active involvement of the member countries as important as in the preparatory phase leading up to the Summit. The overriding objective should be to ensure the relevance of our work for our citizens, as spelled out in the Declaration. We must avoid developments as described by the President of the Parliamentary Assembly, van der Linden, in his thought-provoking address to the Summit: ” Regrettably, today many of our citizens consider European architecture to be more an office building for bureaucrats rather than a home for themselves.”
QUESTION NO. 3:
The Action Plan gives guidance for the future priorities of the Council of Europe, and the members will surely like to see them put in place as soon as possible. How should this be done?
The follow-up process is a common responsibility for all of us. At the same time, it will be natural to expect that countries who have been actively involved in promoting proposals that are reflected in the Action Plan will see a special responsibility to take an equally active part in the follow up work of those proposals. Poland has already given a good example of this responsibility by offering to host the first Democratic Forum, based on the proposal that Poland was actively co-sponsoring.
In practical terms, according to normal working methods, this could happen in two ways:
- We can simply instruct our existing structures of Rapporteur and Working Groups to deal with the different parts of the Action Plan. In fact, this is already the case with the OSCE-process, which is an important part of the Action Plan, and which is dealt with in the first instance by the Rapporteur Group on relations with the OSCE. At regular intervals the relevant groups would report to the Committee of Ministers according to an agreed timetable.
- Another option is to set up an open ended Implementation Group, on the same model as the group that prepared the Summit, Draftsum, under the chairmanship of our Chair. That would allow for dealing with the different issues of the Action Plan at the same time.
There are merits to both approaches. Combinations of the two models are also possible. We have suggested that the Chair undertakes informal consultations with the member countries in the next days to establish the modalities for the follow-up work. We think that this important process should be reflected in the decisions of to-day’s meeting.
We agree that a special consultation process is needed on the establishment of the Group of Wise Persons to deal with the long-term problems of the Court of Human Rights. Like many other countries, we also think that the former President of the EU Court, Iglesias, could be a good candidate to chair the Group of Wise Persons.
File:
Decision taken by the Committee of Ministers on 25 May 2005