Back Secretary General announces new initiatives in the areas of freedom of expression and democratic participation

Strasbourg , 

Presenting his agenda for the next five years to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers today, Secretary General Jagland gave top priority to the implementation of the European Human Rights Convention (ECHR) and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights in the member states.

“The aim must be to put in place legislation in all our member States which is in conformity with the ECHR and to make sure that judicial bodies are established at national level to examine individual complaints based on the case law in Strasbourg”, he said. Mr Jagland welcomed the Belgian government's intention to hold a high-level Conference on the implementation of the Convention in March 2015 as part of its Council of Europe Chairmanship.

Mr Jagland put forward new proposals in the areas of freedom of expression, democratic participation and Roma.

Modelled on the UN's “Human Development Index” he proposed a Council of Europe Participation Index, to assess democratic participation of citizens in political and social life. “The idea is to set up an objective analytical tool, created to combine separate indicators into a single expression” he said.

In the area of freedom of expression, the Secretary General intends to develop and online inventory of cases of violence and intimidation against journalists developed in close co-operation with journalists' associations.

For early 2015, he announced the publication of a comparative study of laws and practices regarding the blocking and filtering of illegal Internet content in the 47 member states.

He also proposed a new Council of Europe thematic Roma action plan.

See also:
Congress expresses full support to new strategic vision of Council of Europe Secretary General