Avenue de l'Europe
F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex
Tel. +33 (0)3 88 41 20 00
www.coe.int

About the Committee of Ministers

Who we are

The Committee of Ministers is composed of the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the 46 member States of the Council of Europe or their Permanent Representatives in Strasbourg.

Secretariat
The Secretariat of the Committee of Ministers (SecCM) comprises some 22 members of the General Secretariat. It is headed by the "Secretary to the Committee of Ministers", who has the rank of a Director General.

Presidency

Liechtenstein

15 November 2023 - 17 May 2024

The Presidency of the Committee of Ministers is transferred each six months, in May and November, from one member State to the next in English alphabetical order.

More information >>

What we do

The Committee of Ministers is the Council of Europe’s decision-making body. It is both a governmental body where national approaches to European problems are discussed on an equal footing and a forum to find collective responses to these challenges.

With the Parliamentary Assembly, it is the guardian of the Council’s fundamental values, and monitors member states’ compliance with their undertakings.

More information on "Voice of the governments" >>

Structure and functioning

The role and functions of the Committee of Ministers (CM) are described in Chapter IV of the Statute of the Council of Europe.

The CM meets at ministerial level and at Deputy level.

The CM is assisted by a Bureau and by subsidiary groups which meet regularly to consider certain issues in depth before decisions are taken. These subsidiary groups are informal working structures of the Deputies and have no decision-making power. They prepare decisions for the Committee of Ministers for adoption, ideally without debate.

The Secretariat of the CM services the meetings of the Ministers and Ministers' Deputies and of their informal working structures.