Speech by the Rt Hon Terry Davis, Secretary General of the Council of Europe

26 January 2009

The last six months have been marked by two developments which may be outside the remit of the Council of Europe, but nevertheless have hugely important consequences for our organisation.

The most recent is the situation in the Middle East. Even if, geographically speaking, the conflict in Gaza took place outside the territory of the Council of Europe, it is a fact that it involves a country which enjoys observer status with this Parliamentary Assembly and also concerns directly the values which our organisation was created to defend. That is why we cannot remain silent and have not remained silent. That is why I stated publicly that although Israel had a right to protect itself, what was happening in Gaza was wrong.

And this is a lesson which goes beyond the current tragic events in the Middle East and is relevant to the efforts which all democratic governments in the world, including the 47 members of the Council of Europe, deploy in the fight against terrorism. The reality is that the only effective antiterrorist measure is one which stops more terrorists than it helps to recruit. That has been the philosophy behind all the recommendations, activities and measures put forward by the Council of Europe in recent years. It has also been the reason for our strong condemnation of the use of torture, illegal detentions and the so-called rendition flights, which involved some European governments.

That is why I am particularly encouraged by the recent public statement of the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. He wrote, and I quote: “We must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, for it is the cornerstone of the democratic society. We must uphold our commitments to human rights and civil liberties at home and abroad.” Both this Assembly and I have repeatedly said something similar over the years. But this is not about who said what and who said it first. The important thing is that we have an agreement about the need to protect our values in the fight against terrorism and to act accordingly. And we are all delighted that some of the first acts of President Obama have been to bring the United States of America into line with our values and their own values.

The second development which is at the forefront of our preoccupations is the global economic crisis.

Economic policy is not part of the Council of Europe mandate, but that does not mean that the Council of Europe is not affected by the economic downturn in all our member states. We are concerned at three levels.

First, we are financed by taxpayers’ money, and in the current situation Governments are even more stringent in looking at every expense including the money they pay to international organisations. As you all know, we have had a difficult budgetary situation for several years, and it will not get any better any time soon. In these circumstances, we are obliged to do our utmost to minimise our costs and maximise our efficiency, and I will explain later what has been done in this respect in the last few years and what we intend to do in the near future.

But economic difficulties also affect us at another level. An economic crisis is a threat to social fabric and social cohesion. It leads to uncertainty about the future and often provokes tensions along national, ethnic, religious or other lines.

And we should also bear in mind that a properly functioning economy requires the proper functioning of democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights. It requires democratically elected and accountable governments at all levels, effective administration, proper legislation, independent judiciary, media freedom, civil society and more. And all this, without any doubt, is the business of the Council of Europe.

That is why we are in a difficult situation. We must cut costs but if we reduce our output it will be even more expensive for Europe in the longer term.

Our task is not made any easier by the fact that there is no consensus among our 47 member states about the priorities of the Council of Europe. Some argue for “the core values” meaning only Democracy, Human Rights and the Rule of law. Others insist on the
so-called “enabling factors” as well - such as culture, education, youth and sport, intercultural dialogue and social cohesion.

In reality, we should ask ourselves how we can achieve respect for democracy, human rights and the rule of law in a multicultural Europe of 47 states, with big differences in social conditions, if we lose sight of intercultural dialogue and social cohesion?

As a result of this lack of agreement, it is very difficult to prioritise the activities of the Council of Europe. Year after year, our member states ask the Secretary General to keep all our existing activities with fewer and fewer resources. Calls for the transfer of resources to some favourite activity from “less important activities” – I quote - are never followed by specific proposals – except a call to cut overheads – forgetting that the Secretariat has calculated that the administrative costs of the Council of Europe have been reduced by 10% during my time as Secretary General. For the rest, it is “efficiency savings”, meaning doing more work with less resources. While there is always room to improve and to organise the work better, it is a fact that sometimes “efficiency savings” simply means more work for the Secretariat.

That is why last year in preparing this year’s budget, I tried to avoid “across the board efficiency savings” and instead asked Secretariat to comb through the budget details and apply targeted, precision cuts.

Against this overall background, the Council of Europe had to face three particularly difficult problems during the last year.

The first was a sharp increase in the contributions of member states to the pension fund. This is a direct and inevitable consequence of the increased number of people working at the Court and the enlargement of the Council of Europe. The two are linked. The number of member states doubled in a decade, and that increase resulted in more staff and more people in the pensions scheme. Well before the current crisis, it had been known for several years that the projected return on the pensions fund was optimistic. Nevertheless, many people were surprised by the amount of the shortfall when we received the actuarial study last year, and we were told that the Governments of our member states should increase their contributions to the pension fund by
7 million euros. And here I must give credit to the Governments for having increased their contributions by more than
3 million euros and for having accepted my proposal to find the balance – for this year at least – by using the surplus accrued by the Pharmacopoeia.

The second development was the war between two of our member states in August last year. The war inevitably had a negative fallout across the board, including the decision-making process, and we also had to re-prioritise and reallocate resources to help post-conflict rehabilitation and respect for human rights in South Caucasus.

The third development is, of course, the global financial crisis. The world economy took a sudden and dramatic downturn, and this happened exactly when our budget proposals entered the phase of substantial discussion and decision. Although there were some voices calling for zero nominal growth, or a reduction of the base on which ordinary budget is calculated – which would have meant an abrupt reduction in Council of Europe activities – the fact is that these calls were rejected by the Ambassadors as a group.

And what the Secretariat achieved in 2008 shows that reform, rigorous management and collective effort can bring results - even in rough weather.

Our accounts – by which I mean our accounting procedures - are in better shape than ever. The Council of Europe has achieved, for the first time since the introduction of new accounting rules for public organisations, an unqualified positive opinion from the External Auditor.

We do not yet have the final figures for 2008, but the Directorate of Finance tell me that when we do receive the final figures, we will find that we had virtually no underspending last year. In previous years, the Council of Europe has underspent by several million euros compared with the Budget. The change means that we are now planning better and spending our resources as planned. In other words, we have delivered our Programme of Activities instead of asking the Governments of our member states to allocate money to the Council of Europe in order to undertake a programme of activities and then failing to implement it.

For this year’s budget we have also managed to finance the increase in staff salaries as recommended by the co-ordinating body for international organisations even though the increase was higher than expected. And that means that the Council of Europe honoured the agreement which I negotiated with the Staff Committee a couple of years ago – an agreement for which members of the Secretariat gave up half their salary increase for that year. Again I am grateful for the support which I received from the Governments of our member states on this issue of honouring an agreement.

On the other hand, I will not say that everything has been positive.

I regret that the Governments insisted on a reduction in the provision for celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Council of Europe. Compared with my original, very modest proposal, it was cut by half. Personally,
I regard the 60th anniversary of the Council of Europe as a unique opportunity to increase the visibility of the Council of Europe, and
I defended this position as long as I could.

Looking to the future, I must tell you that the prospects for next year’s budget look even more difficult. I cannot change the financial situation of our member states. But I can assure you that I am doing my best to leave for my successor a house in good order - a Council of Europe which is efficiently managed and produces results.

To illustrate this, allow me to mention a few of the achievements of the last year.

The Council of Europe has clearly reinforced its place and influence on the international scene. My idea of separating the Directorate of External Relations from the Directorate General of Democracy and Political Affairs and to upgrade it with the appointment of a new Director who is an experienced former Ambassador, has been proved to be right – proved by results.

Thanks to the work done by this Directorate of External Relations and to some extent by myself – as well as the support and encouragement of the current Chairman-in-Office, Minister Moratinos – I think that I am the first ever Secretary General of the Council of Europe to be invited to visit the headquarters of the Organisation of American States in Washington this spring and to be invited to give a key lecture in their annual Lecture Series attended by leading opinion makers from all the Americas.

Similarly, we have reinforced our cooperation with the Organisation Internationale de Francophonie. Last year I was the first Secretary General of the Council of Europe to attend their Heads of State meeting in Quebec, and next week I will visit their headquarters in Paris to discuss with Secretary General Abdou Diouf some specific ways to reinforce cooperation between our two organisations. Again, I am grateful to the Francophone Group of Ambassadors at the Council of Europe for their support.

In addition, I believe I am the first Secretary General of the Council of Europe to be invited to give a lecture – on democracy and human rights in Europe – to the Governing Board of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development at their Headquarters in London.

The Directorate of External Relations has also succeeded in putting institutional relations with the European Union back on track. Regular meetings at senior official level have been reinstated, and the Office of the Council of Europe in Brussels has been upgraded with the appointment of a new Special Representative of the Secretary General – another seasoned former Ambassador.

And now the recent appointment of a press officer with a specific mandate to raise our visibility with the media based in Brussels will help to build on this progress.

And while I am talking about the visibility of the Council of Europe, let me give you a few statistics which testify to the unprecedented improvement achieved by our Directorate of Communication.

Over recent years, media coverage has seen a constant increase – on average 10 % per year. But last year, changes in our approach to communications have created real momentum. Media monitoring for the period January to November 2008, compared to the same period in 2007, showed an increase of 89% in the number of articles and news about the Council of Europe. In absolute figures this represents more than 10,000 articles compared to a little over 5000 in 2007, but you have to bear in mind that these figures only cover the media we are able to monitor. The real figure is of course much higher, but from the figures we do have, the trend is clear enough.

To this I should add that the staff of the Directorate of Communication are regularly coming up with new ideas on how to do more to inform the public about what the Council of Europe is and what it does. I will mention only the latest idea. Over the last three years, the Council of Europe has opened its doors three times to the people of Strasbourg, Alsace and our neighbours across the Rhine. As a result of our three Open Days, thousands of people have come to our buildings here in Strasbourg and met our staff who have shown them what we do. This year, in May, we are planning to change it and open our doors in the context of Nuit des musées, which is an annual event here in France when all the art galleries and museums open their doors to the public and stay open late into the night. The idea of the Directorate of Communication is very simple and low cost. We will take the impressive collection of art, donated by our member states over the years, from the corridors, meeting rooms and from the store in the basement, and transform the Palais de l’Europe into an art gallery and stay open as late as possible.

Meanwhile, the Directorate of Democracy and Political Affairs continues with its hugely successful network of 16 Council of Europe Schools of Political Studies. The hallmark event is the Annual Summer University of Democracy which will, for the fourth consecutive time this year, bring several hundred students from these schools to Strasbourg in July.

Elsewhere, we have now had a full year effect of the merger of the Directorate General of Legal Affairs and the Directorate General of Human Rights, and the benefits are substantial. The new combined Directorate General is clearly a success. We now have a mutually reinforcing structure of standard setting, monitoring and cooperation activities. Against this background, one can only ask again how much more we could do if we only had more resources.

What we do have, in terms of “more”, is the Convention against Trafficking in Human Beings, which has now been put into effect as a result of having been ratified by 20 countries – something for which I have been personally campaigning ever since it was adopted at the Warsaw Summit. But 20 ratifications means 27 non-ratifications, and almost everywhere I go, the excuse for non-ratification is the delay by the national parliament. Do I need to draw the obvious conclusion?

Over the last year I have also invested significant personal effort in activities related to intercultural dialogue. The ideas in the White Book on Intercultural Dialogue, approved by the Governments in early 2008, have now been put into practice.

And the Directorate General for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, which is responsible for this part of our work, has also launched a new campaign against discrimination, with the slogan “Speak out against Discrimination”. This Campaign is being run jointly with the Directorate of Communication and in co-operation with media professionals across Europe. Because it is a campaign, its real target is the public. As a result, posters bearing the campaign slogan have appeared here in the streets of Strasbourg and in Rome and Ljubljana, and negotiations are ongoing to do the same in Berlin, Lisbon and Madrid. The CNN website carried the banner of the campaign in December last year, and nearly half a million people clicked on to learn about this Council of Europe activity.

And the Directorate General of Social Cohesion is not only responsible for our campaigns against child abuse but also has the Pharmacopoeia which provides a special and a vital service for Europe and increasingly for other Continents as well.

I will stop the list here, but I want to emphasise that this is far from being an exhaustive list of achievements. The fact is that we are doing more than we have ever done before, and we are doing it better.

Before I conclude, I want to add a few words about the European Court of Human Rights.

Today, we have nearly 100,000 pending applications. Last year, the number of pending applications increased by 20%. That means that the Court is popular, and that is good. The Court is here to be used.

However I am myself concerned about another issue - the failure of some Governments to respect Rule 39 of the Court’s Rules of Procedure. Under this Rule, the Court may ask a Government to take interim measures to prevent irreversible negative consequences such as a deportation to some other country where there is a risk of torture or the death penalty. I will not hide my disappointment that some requests by the Court under Rule 39 are ignored by the Governments of our member states. For me it is a question of respect – or rather lack of respect - for the rule of law!

To sum up, at the Council of Europe we are fully aware of the difficult economic situation faced by our member states – and we act accordingly. Our response to zero real growth is straightforward: efficiency and visibility. In the long term, this is the only way to persuade Governments that we are giving not only good but the best possible value for money.

However, there are limits, and there are risks. Efficiency is one thing. Cuts in our activities are another. And we are a labour-intensive organisation. Our activities depend on the expertise of our staff. Some may argue that in the current economic situation the answer lies in downsizing the Council of Europe. But that would inevitably lead to the upsizing of the problems the Council of Europe was created to resolve. And there is a cost attached to that – a cost which can be measured not only in less democracy, less human rights and less rule of law, but also in financial terms. In money which will have to be spent on putting out fires which can be prevented if we have not only the will but also the means to act in time.