The Council of Europe costs one euro a year – and it’s worth every cent

Heard the one about the Council of Europe? It’s worse than a bureaucracy – it’s a Eurocracy. Boom-boom! I’ve just got back from the Council of Europe (CoE) – I was reporting on the parliamentary assembly last week in Strasbourg – and, despite the almost universal cynicism typified by the crack above, I’m a big fan.

OK, there are hundreds of bureaucrats beavering away in plushly appointed offices looking after ‘protocol’ and other obscure stuff.

But that’s probably inevitable with an organisation that deals with 47 member states, from Iceland in the west to the easternmost reaches of Russia, and with a combined population of 800 million.

Some of those 47 states are mature democracies, others are ‘emerging democracies’, as we are encouraged to describe countries like Azerbaijan. And then there is the huge range of languages and cultures, not to mention historical antipathies and alliances, and vast differences in per capita income and natural resources.

So why am I a big fan of this behemoth?

Because it’s the one institution that, since its establishment in 1949 in the ashes and rubble of the second world war, has consistently stood up for human rights and democracy across the whole of Europe.

The CoE sends teams to investigate the treatment of the Greek minority in Albania, for example, and to visit hotspots like the Chechen Republic to report on human rights violations there. At the other end of the scary spectrum, the CoE is also active in Switzerland, the UK, France, Germany, Scandinavia and all the other ‘safe’ states that make up western Europe.

These latter states often stand accused of human rights violations. The UK, for instance, is currently in the dock for not allowing prisoners to vote and for failing to destroy the DNA records of people who were picked up by the police, but not convicted of any crime. There’s also our alleged complicity in torture, secret detention centres, rendition, forced repatriations to dangerous countries, jailing minors and… You get the picture.

Central to the activities of the CoE is the European Court of Human Rights, set up in 1959, whose role is to rule on violations of the civil and political rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. It has been swamped with applications, but reforms and something catchily called Protocol 14 should begin to reduce the 100,000-plus backlog of cases.

An English lawyer working for the CoE told me that the CoE costs every citizen of Europe just €1 each per year. That seems a small price to pay for a body that is pledged to protect the rights of us all.

That’s why I am a big fan.

I am preparing a feature on the CoE for the print version of the Gazette, which will go into more detail about its work and include interviews with the secretary-general of the CoE, the president of the European Court of Human Rights and staff involved in countering torture, drug abuse, people trafficking, discrimination and other issues of concern.