“ What are we about? “

Social cohesion is a political concept that highlights the strong relationship between the core values of the Council of Europe. It provides the absolutely necessary condition for democratic stability and sustainable development throughout Europe. 

In this context our most challenging priority is promoting social rights which are considered, especially in today’s economic crisis, “the bread and butter of human rights”.  We are also concerned with such basic human rights as the right to health protection and the right to have equal access to health care.  “No poor health for poor people” has always been our motto. Guaranteeing the quality of medicines and fighting counterfeit medicine are other major tasks of our work in the area of public health.

Our activities also focus on the whole variety of human rights of vulnerable groups such as elderly people and people with disabilities (the latter are, by the way, numerically the most important vulnerable group in Europe counting more than 80 million people).  We pay particular attention to the future of Europe – to children, protecting their rights in the same manner as the rights of adults.  We are strongly convinced that children are not mini human beings with mini human rights.

Empowering the poor, measuring the progress of societies by developing indicators of well-being as well as promoting good governance in health care and patient's participation are valid contributions to promoting another core value of the Council of Europe – democracy.

A jewel in the crown of our Directorate General is the Oviedo Convention on human rights and biomedicine, the only legally binding international instrument helping to strike the right balance between freedom of research and the protection of the individual.

These do not constitute the complete range of our activities but they are major examples of what we are doing to create European societies which are more oriented towards human rights, more democratic and more socially cohesive and fair. 

Following the Conference of Ministers responsible for social cohesion held in Moscow in February 2009, a new Strategy for Social Cohesion and an Action Plan for Social Cohesion providing further orientations and guidance both to the Council of Europe and to its member states have been drafted and adopted by the Committee of Ministers on the 7th of July 2010.