49th meeting of the Committee of Legal Advisers on Public International Law (CAHDI)

Statement by
Mr Jörg POLAKIEWICZ

Director of Legal Advice and Public International Law
Council of Europe

Strasbourg, 19 March 2015

Monsieur le Président,

Dear Colleagues,

• Allow me to briefly present you some of the main events that took place within the Organisation since we last met in The Hague.
• I will not go through all of them – you will find the most relevant information under item 5 of the agenda in document CAHDI (2015) 1 containing the decisions of the Committee of Ministers relevant to the CAHDI.
• Nor shall I address the CJEU’s opinion on accession to the ECHR which comes under agenda item 9. At this stage let me only quote the President of the ECHR who declared at the opening of Court’s judicial year on 30 January: “Disons-le clairement : la deception qui a été la nôtre à la lecture de cet avis est à la mesure de l’attente que nous en avions. … Notre Cour continuera d’apprécier la conventionalité des actes des États, quelle que soit leur origine, et les États sont et resteront responsables de leurs obligations au regard de la Convention. »

Ukraine

• This week (17-18 March) Secretary General Jagland paid a two-day visit to Kiev and launched a 2015-2017 Action Plan for Ukraine. This Plan is dedicated to supporting and promoting constitutional and judicial reform, decentralisation, fair elections and to fight corruption. The Secretary General assured the Prime Minister of the Council of Europe's full support for Ukraine's reform process and territorial integrity. The Secretary General and the Prime Minister agreed on the need for a comprehensive constitutional reform and full implementation of the Minsk agreements by all parties. Secretary General Jagland will report on his mission to the Committee of Ministers later this morning.

• The International Advisory Panel to oversee the investigations into the violent incidents which took place in Ukraine from 30 November 2013 onwards is expected to publish its report by the end of March.

Council of Europe action to combat terrorism

• One of the major items currently on our agenda is action to combat terrorism. The horrendous terrorist attacks in France, Belgium and Denmark have prompted immediate reactions by the Secretary General and the Committee of Ministers.
• The Secretary General has presented proposals for immediate action by the Council of Europe to combat extremism and radicalisation leading to terrorism. The proposed measures will be discussed by the Committee of Ministers this afternoon.
• The proposals are articulated around three main objectives.
• The first objective is to step-up work on strengthening legal action against terrorism. It will notably consist of:

• helping first of all to ensure that all Council of Europe member States, and neighbouring countries, sign and ratify, as a matter of priority, the European Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism (CETS No.196);
• drafting an additional protocol on “foreign terrorist fighters” to the European Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism which will define more precisely offences named in UNSC resolution 2178 (2014) and commit parties to establish the required criminal offences under their domestic law.

The draft protocol is currently being prepared by the Committee on Foreign Terrorist Fighters and Related Issues (COD-CTE), acting under the authority of the Committee of Experts on Terrorism (CODEXTER). It is expected to be finalised by CODEXTER on 10 April 2015, with a view to its adoption by the Committee of Ministers at their ministerial session on 19 May 2015.

• Reviewing and updating Committee of Ministers Recommendation Rec(2005)7 concerning identity and travel documents and the fight against terrorism.

• The second objective is to initiate concrete measures in education, in prisons and on the Internet, to prevent and fight radicalisation. This will be achieved notably through the drafting of guidelines on how to prevent radicalisation in prisons as well as through several conferences and campaigns in order to give more visibility to Council of Europe standards and tools in this field.
• The third objective is to devote the ministerial session in Brussels to this subject and to adopt a declaration and action plan. The aim is to address root causes, through action in various fields, including:

• drafting a new recommendation on terrorists acting alone, providing guidelines to member states on how to efficiently prevent and suppress this form of terrorism;
• preventing and fighting radicalisation through concrete measures in schools, prisons and on the Internet;
• identifying key competences required for democratic culture and intercultural dialogue with a view to developing a competence framework for member states, to be used and adapted in their own education system. We hope that such a framework will have a success similar to the language framework developed by the Council of Europe, entitled “Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, and Assessment”.
• providing a counter-narrative to the misuse of religion.

• This is it – but it is already very much! – regarding the Council of Europe agenda on terrorism. I wanted to be as exhaustive as possible given the atrocious nature of these acts which directly threatens what the Council of Europe and our democratic societies stand for.

* * *

• I will now come to a point close to my heart, l’ouverture de l’Organisation à d’autres Etats et organisations et leur participation dans nos conventions

• Il y a d’abord la politique de voisinage qui se développe considérablement – le Comité des Ministres ayant adopté début février 2015 des documents relatifs aux partenariats de voisinage pour la période 2015-2017 avec la Jordanie, le Maroc et la Tunisie (voir les décisions du Comité des Ministres sous le point 5 de l’ordre du jour).
• Ces documents constituent un cadre dynamique pour un rapprochement de ces pays aux normes et activités du Conseil de l’Europe, notamment à travers des activités de coopération.
• Les documents prévoient aussi que des représentants des pays visés pourront participer en tant qu'observateurs à des réunions des comités d'experts intergouvernementaux appropriés.
• Cela veut dire concrètement que le CAHDI pourra associer les trois pays visés – pour le moment la Jordanie, le Maroc et la Tunisie - aussi à ses travaux dans la mesure que ceux-ci portent sur "des questions pertinentes au regard de la mise en œuvre du partenariat de voisinage."
• Mais il y a aussi d’importants nouveaux développements en matière de droit des traités.
• Comme vous le savez, un grand nombre de conventions du Conseil de l’Europe sont ouvertes à l’adhésion d’Etats non membres du Conseil de l’Europe – récemment, à titre d’exemple, l’Indonésie a ratifié la Convention concernant l'assistance administrative mutuelle en matière fiscale telle qu'amendée par le Protocole de 2010 (STE n° 127) ou encore les Seychelles qui ont signé cette même Convention.
• Partant de là, l’Organisation a estimé nécessaire de règlementer cette participation dans la mesure où ces adhésions engendrent parfois des coûts pour le Conseil de l’Europe dès lors que les conventions concernées prévoient une participation financière des parties contractantes non membres du Conseil de l’Europe à leur mécanisme de suivi.
• Le Comité des Ministres a donc adopté le 18 février dernier la Résolution CM/Res (2015)1 concernant les modalités financières de la participation des Etats non membres aux conventions du Conseil de l’Europe. Cette résolution prévoit une méthode de calcul à appliquer lorsqu’une partie contractante non membre du Conseil de l’Europe participe de plein droit à un mécanisme de suivi d’une convention qui contient une clause relative à la participation financière à ce mécanisme de suivi.
• To be very clear, this resolution replaces and abrogates Resolution CM/Res (2013)7 concerning financial arrangements for the participation of non-member States in Council of Europe conventions. A review of the implementation of this resolution found that it had not yielded any financial benefits, but caused serious irritation in several non-member states because of its unclear scope and purpose.
• Hence a radical change in the scope of the resolution: the new resolution will apply solely to conventions providing explicitly for a financial contribution to their follow-up mechanism by non-member states. These are so far only three, all very recent conventions: the Medicrime Convention (CETS No. 211), the Convention against the manipulation of sports competitions (CETS No. 215) and the Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs, which will be opened for signature next week.
• In parallel, we shall further develop concrete cooperation projects based on particular conventions, which we hope will be financed to a large extent by extrabudgetary resources. I personally remain convinced that the most effective way to promote our conventions is to make accession to them worthwhile for member and non-member states alike because of the concrete benefits that they derive from their implementation. If these instruments are seen to provide real added value, facilitate cooperation between the parties, provide focal points for networks of experts, exchange of good practices and are accompanied by meaningful cooperation activities, parties will be more than willing to participate in the necessary financing. The example of our Budapest Cybercrime Convention stands out, which has become not only a worldwide reference point in terms of standards, but also the basis for numerous cooperation activities financed not only by governments, but even by the private sector.

• We also propose to change the procedure of consulting non-member states on requests for accession by other non-member states. The current practice consists of a two-tier procedure to first consult all members of the Council of Europe and then the non-member states parties. This procedure has been followed consistently for almost 20 years although it is not based on any explicit CM decision, nor is making this distinction required by the final clauses. It is a cumbersome procedure; usually three month are given for the consultation of non-member states, which may sometimes be a single country.
• Under the new procedure which I shall present to the Rapporteur Group on Legal Co-operation (GR-J) next week, all contracting parties to a convention, be they member or non-member states will be consulted at the same time. The objective is to ensure equal footing between all contracting parties. While the final decision on accession remains under most conventions reserved to the Committee of Ministers, there is no reason to discriminate when it comes to consultations. Most conventions provide anyway for the unanimous consent by all contracting parties as a condition for the decision to invite a non-member state to accede.
• Enfin, j’aimerais vous informer que le Tribunal Administratif du Conseil de l’Europe fête aujourd’hui et demain son 50^ème anniversaire et organise à cette occasion un colloque sur les Convergences et l’autonomie des tribunaux administratifs internationaux. Ayant été invité à intervenir dans un panel de ce colloque, je m’excuse d’ailleurs de ne pas pouvoir suivre toute votre réunion.
• Le 16 décembre 2014, le Conseil de l’Europe a d’ailleurs signé un accord avec la Commission Centrale pour la Navigation du Rhin (CCNR) afin que notre Tribunal Administratif puisse examiner les litiges du travail entre cette Organisation et ses agents, ce qui est un bel reconnaissance de son rayonnement.

* * *

• Due to time constraints, I shall stop here and will only mention two major events next week:

• The opening for signature of the Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs in Santiago de Compostela on 25^th of March.
• The high-level conference on “Implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights: our shared responsibility” to be held in Brussels on 26-27 March.

• I wish you a fruitful and constructive meeting.
• Thank you very much for your attention.