During the January part session the final stage of a long process aimed at giving the Assembly real influence in future cases of blatant violations related to the Council of Europe’s statute or the ECHR by a member State had been reached.
The idea had its roots in the Kox-report on the future role and mission of the Parliamentary Assembly which called in its recommendation for a “joint response procedure which could be triggered by either the Parliamentary Assembly, the Committee of Ministers or the Secretary General and in which all three of them would participate”.
Speaking on behalf of the Group in Assembly’s debate on the issue, chairperson of the UEL, Mr Kox noted the following: “we all are aware that until now this Assembly does not have a real means to ensure being involved in such blatant cases. All powers until now in this respect are with the inter-governmental part of the Council of Europe, the Committee of Ministers. This has caused many unpleasant confrontations between the Committee of Ministers and this Assembly. After a long and often very complex process, finally an agreement was reached, first amongst us and later amongst PACE and the Committee of Ministers on a new joint complementary mechanism.”
Chair Kox also noted that it is a unique moment for the Parliamentary Assembly “As far as I can see, in the history of the Council of Europe, the Committee of Ministers gives away part of its powers to this Assembly so that we can also play our realistic role in the case that a Member State is blatantly violating its obligations”… “We have to say ‘thank you very much’ to the Committee of Ministers. The Committee of Ministers also can say “thank you very much” to the Assembly because all together we created a new situation in which we can better deal with the cases as called in the report.”
Link to the report:
Link to the intervention of Mr. Kox: