Page
I. INTRODUCTION - 2
II . GENERAL REMARKS - 2
III . ACTIVITIES - 4
IV. WORKING METHODS - 5
(a) Collaboration - 5
(i) Spokesmen - 5
(ii) Secretarial services of national delegations - 6
(iii) Secretariat-General at Strasbourg - 7
(b) Selection of texts - 7
(c) Measures to expedite the signing or ratification of Council of Europe Conventions and Agreements - 8
(d) Notification of national Parliaments concerning action taken by the Committee of Ministers on Assembly Recommendations - 8
V. IMPROVEMENT OF WORKING METHODS - 9
(a) Distribution of documents containing initital measures taken in support of a selected text - 9
(b) Preparation by the Working Party's Secretariat of documents for tabling in the national Parliaments - 9
(c) Documentation available to national Parliaments when Council of Europe affairs are discussed - 10
(d) Translation of adopted texts - 10
(e) Circulars containing information on activity in national Parliaments relating to Council of Europe affairs - 10
VI . RESULTS - 11
VII. CONCLUSIONS - 11
APPENDICES :
Appendix I : Table showing action taken in national Parliaments on Council of Europe affairs (1st October 1958 to 31st August 1959) - 13
Appendix II : Table showing number of cases in which action was taken in national Parliaments on texts selected by the Working Party - 14
3. Despite some scepticism when it was set up three years ago, the Working Party had substantial results and by the constant impetus it gives to the pursuit of the aims of the Council of Europe, today holds a special position within the Assembly. The nature of these functions, owing to the complexity of procedure in the different national Parliaments, obliges it not only to select and develop a great variety of means of giving effect to the Assembly's requests, but also to take practical action on nearly all the questions dealt with by the Assembly and to follow progress ori each question very closely.
4. Thanks to the efforts of its members and the spokesmen of the national delegations, and to the understanding of their colleagues in national Parliaments, the Working Party has met with increasing success over the period covered by this Report. This fact has been recognised in several speeches by Members of the Assembly, by committee chairmen, who often t u r n to the Working P a r t y to obtain support for texts issued by their committees, and, lastly, by the Committee of Ministers, which, in presenting its Statutory Report to the Assembly and in reply to oral questions, has always stressed the importance of discussing Council of Europe affairs in the national Parliaments.
5. The initial creation of the Working Party and its activities have been described in several independent publications. Its documents, particularly the regular "Circular" on activity in t h e national Parliaments, relating to Council of Europe matters, have been referred to on many occasions in the Parliaments and at the meeting of t h e Interparliamentary Union in April 1959Note.
6. Thus the Working Party has been able to help bring about a steady increase in the number of occasions on which Council of Europe matters have been raised in Parliaments (see table at the end of this Report) and to achieve the following results;
progress has been made in promoting questions of European interest;
an awareness of their responsibility over European problems has been aroused among European parliamentarians;
the work of the Committee of Ministers has been facilitated by the support that a number of questions have received in the Parliaments;
the role of t h e Assembly as a forum of European public opinion has to some extent been extended to the Parliaments;
generally speaking, European parliamentarians and the public are better informed on European questions.
7. Despite its successes, the Working Party has no intention of resting on its laurels. Using the experience it has acquired it has therefore embarked on a thorough investigation of t h e reasons for t h e differences in t h e outcome of its efforts, and the results are analysed in the following sections.
8. It can generally be said that when members of the Assembly are in Strasbourg they devote themselves to the work of the Assembly and its committees with commendable zeal. But when the same Representatives return to their own Parliaments they are "snowed under" with national problems, and, with the best will in the world, they no, longer have the necessary time to devote to Council of Europe matters. This is quite natural and understandable, and the Working Party has sought to devise ways and means of ensuring t h a t Representatives shall "not forget Strasbourg" — and these are also described in the following sections :
9. It has been, and still is, the prime concern of the Working P a r t y to help members of t h e Assembly to convert their good intentions into practical and effective measures in their Parliaments.
10. During the period under review the Working Party held six meetings grouped round Sessions of the Assembly.
11. At these meetings the Working Party :
As in previous years,, the Working Party has been assisted in its work
by spokesmen;
by the secretarial services of national delegations;
by the Council of Europe Secretariat at Strasbourg.
In all its previous reports the Working Party has stressed the importance it attaches to the co-operation of the spokesmen. The latter provide the- "driving force'' of action in their Parliaments. They have to consider what opportunities their parliamentary procedure offers of taking effective action, discussing matters with their colleagues in the respective committees concerned'with particular questions, tabling documents, defending their proposals in Parliament and perhaps approaching the competent Ministers personally.
Simultaneously with the setting up of the Working Party in 1956 national delegations had appointed for these tasks a number of spokesmen who were not, however, at the same time members of the Working Party. Owing to the fact that most of the spokesmen appointed at t h a t time are no longer members of the Assembly the whole of the work now falls upon members of the Working Party.
For this reason the Working Party is anxious to draw the attention of the delegations once again to the advantage of dividing up the work more evenly among their members and of appointing one or more spokesmen, preferably chosen from political parties other than t h a t of the member of the Working Party.
The Working Party has always attached great importance to the part secretarial services of national delegations can play in the activities of the Working Party. Delegation' secretaries are regularly invited to attend its meetings and on these occasions they have put forward many practical and useful suggestions.
The Working Party would like to express its thanks once again for their invaluable assistance and co-operation.
In its constant desire to relieve overworked parliamentarians of some of their burden, the Working Party suggested in its previous reports that the national delegations should increase the staff of their respective secretarial services.
The Working Party is glad to note that as a result of these proposals four delegations have strengthened their secretarial services, and this has served to increase the number of occasions on which the Council of Europe matters have been raised in their Parliaments. Indeed, experience has shown that in cases where delegation secretaries, who, moreover, receive copies of all correspondence addressed to members of the Working Party and spokesmen, have helped to draft documents and to collect the necessary signatures, the outcome has been successful.
On the other hand, it must be pointed out that in the periods between Sessions it is difficult for the secretarial services to continue to take part in the activities of the Working Party, mainly because they generally have other important duties in their Government departments which prevent them from aiding their parliamentarians to follow up Council of Europe questions. For this reason the Working P a r t y would like to reiterate the following suggestions made to these delegations in its previous report :
The assistance given by the Council of Europe Secretariat at Strasbourg is apparent from the details given in later sections of this report. This assistance has hitherto been provided by one person, namely the secretary of the Working Party.
The Working Party has taken great care in the selecting of texts, which forms the basis of all its activities.
As pointed out earlier on, 121 texts were considered or reconsidered several times during the period under review and of these 62 were sent one or several times with the Working Party's comments to spokesmen of national delegations.
In its last annual report the Working Party informed the Assembly that it had appointed a Rapporteur to select new texts and reconsider those selected earlier. During the period covered by this report the Rapporteur has submitted six very detailed reports to the Working Party, thereby enabling the latter to take decisions with a full knowledge of the facts.
Furthermore, the Working Party has, upon request, assisted committee chairmen in connection with a number of texts which, though already adopted by the Assembly, had not been followed up as hoped.
In its previous reports the Working Party had suggested t h a t if the Assembly and its committees expected to receive effective support in the national Parliaments for their adopted texts, the latter should contain only clear, precise and practical proposals.
Examination of the texts adopted by the Assembly since last October prompts the Working Party to draw attention once again to this point. In cases where texts have been drafted in all too general terms, inviting the Committee of Ministers "to give every support" or "to consider the possibility of..." etc., the Working P a r t y has not been able to recommend practical steps in the Parliaments.
As in the past the Working Party has made a regular study of progress in the signing and ratification of Council of Europe conventions and agreements. As a result of its suggestions action has been taken on 40 occasions in the Parliaments of member countries with a view to speeding up signing or ratification. At the April, part-Session in 1959 the Working Party submitted to the Assembly a draft Resolution (Resolution 168) on the subject and it was adopted unanimously.
The Working Party gave this question particular attention. A great many members of national Parliaments, and: especially those who are not familiar with' the work of the Council' of Europe, believe that most Assembly recommendations remain., a dead letter. The obvious reason for this is that they often hear of the Assembly's request during public debates in their Parliaments but are rarely informed: of what is more important, namely whether the Governments have put the Assembly's recommendations into effect.
The Working Party therefore submitted two motions to the Assembly, which were adopted unanimously (Recommendation 168 of 15th October 1958, and. the Resolution of 22nd January 1959).
After the adoption of these texts several questions were put by members of the Consultative Assembly in the national Parliaments and the Working Party was able to record 25 cases in which Governments supplied information on their attitude in the Committee of Ministers, on particular subjects.
The improvements in working methods described in the previous annual report (Doc. 877) have, in general, proved useful and the Working Party has applied them as it thought fit.
However, in order to take advantage of every possible opportunity to stimulate parliamentary action in support of Council of Europe affairs, the Working Party has taken the following new measures :
The Working Party's secretarial service has been instructed, as soon as any initial measures have been taken concerning a text in one of the Parliaments, to transmit the document in question to spokesmen in other Parliaments with a request that they look into the possibility of tabling a similar document.
As the Working Party is well aware that most spokesmen have neither the time nor staff to draw up documents, such as questions and motions, it has offered to have them drafted by the Secretariat.
Several spokesmen have taken good advantage of this facility. Nearly all the questions prepared by the Secretariat are returned to it in the form of parliamentary working papers.
On other occasions the Secretariat has, at the request of the spokesmen, drawn up short memoranda to facilitate the drafting of documents.
The Working Party would like to draw the attention of members of the Assembly to this facility for drafting and tabling documents in their own Parliaments.
As a result of steps taken by members of the Working Party in their national Parliaments, a number of the latter now regularly submit their programme of work to the Office of the Clerk of the Assembly.
The Working Party thought it would be valuable for the Clerk of the Assembly to receive, regularly and as early as possible, the programmes of work of the Parliaments of member countries. The Office of the Clerk has thus been able to send the appropriate documents at once to members of the Working Party and the spokesmen every time their respective Parliaments planned to discuss questions on which the Consultative Assembly had adopted recommendations on resolutions.
The idea was that members of the Working Party and spokesmen would thus have material at their disposal giving a European view of the questions under discussion and would as a result be in a position to support in Parliament the texts adopted by the Consultative Assembly.
In its previous Report the Working Party invited members of the Assembly to take advantage of the translation facilities for texts, distributing them in their own Parliaments. A number of Representatives made use of this facility and the Working Party's secretarial service has, on request, supplied some texts in Danish and Turkish.
In accordance with the decision of the Working Party, Resolution 169 on the future prospects of co-operation within the orbit of the Council of Europe has been translated into the languages of all member countries and distributed to all the members of the national Parliaments.
Ever since it was set up, the Working Party has published a "Circular" before each part-Session of the Assembly, giving particulars of parliamentary action relating to Council of Europe affairs. The purpose of the circular is not only to supply information, on events in national Parliaments; indeed it is largely concerned with putting forward suggestions for supporting the Assembly's requests.
As the circular has served its purpose very satisfactorily for the members and the spokesmen over the first two years, the Working Party instructed its secretarial service to improve on its presentation and issue it in printed form for regular distribution to all the Representatives to the Assembly and their substitutes.
As stated above, the circular has aroused great interest outside the Council of Europe as well as among members of the Assembly.
In the course of the eleven months covered by this report, the Working Party has been notified of 316 occasions on which action has been taken in the Parliaments of member countries concerning Council of Europe matters, compared with 119 occasions during the twelve months period 1956/1957 and 205 during the twelve months 1957/1958. For details see Appendix I.
Of the 41 texts selected and transmitted to the spokesmen (1 of which was sent four times, 4 three times and 11 twice) 33 gave rise to 138 cases of action in Parliaments. For details see Appendix II.
Action was taken on 40 occasions in support of the signing or ratification of Council of Europe Conventions and on 138 occasions with reference to other texts or during general debates on the Council of Europe.
The continuous increase in its activities as described above is in itself confirmation that the measures taken by the Working Party have yielded satisfactory results.
The Working Party believes, however, that there is considerable room for development of its activities, provided that, national delegations help to bring about closer relations between themselves and the Working Party, particularly by appointing spokesmen and strengthening their secretarial services.
Your Working Party desires to renew its thanks to all the members of the Assembly, who, by their understanding and support and by their efforts within their respective Parliaments, have enabled it once again to submit an encouraging report to the Assembly.
| Countries | Documents tabled | Special or general debates | Individual approaches | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 7 (11) | 7 (6) | 10 (13) | 24 (33) |
| Belgium | 4 (3) | 5 (-) | - (-) | 9 (3) |
| Denmark | 1 (2) | 9 (5) | - (8) | 10 (15) |
| France | 10 (—) | 1 (—) | 5 (4) | 16 (4) |
| Fed, Rep. of Germany | 29 (41) | 14 (3) | 3 (-) | 46 (44) |
| Greece | - (-) | - (-) | - (1) | - (1) |
| Iceland | - (-) | - (-) | - (-) | - (-) |
| Ireland | 1 25 (19) | 3 (—) | 1 (—) | 5 (-) |
| Italy | 5 (15 | 7 (—) | - (5) | 12 (20) |
| Luxembourg | - (-) | 2 (2) | - (-) | 2 (2) |
| Netherlands | 10 (—) | 2 (5) | - (-) | 12 (5) |
| Norway | - (1) | 1 (2) | - (—) | 1 (3) |
| Sweden | 19 (18) | 6 (1) | - (—) | 25 (19) |
| Turkey | - (—) | - (—) | 18 (—) | 18 (-) |
| United Kingdom | 65 (28) | 67 (27) | 4 (1) | 136 (56) |
| Total | 151 (119) | 124 (54) | 41 (32) | 316 (205) |
| № | Texts | Dates of transmission to spokesmen | Number of casesNote | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. RECOMMENDATIONS | |||||||||
| 121 | Resettlement of refugee and surplus agricultural workers. | 23. 1.1957 | 23.10.1958 | (3) - | 122 | Increased use of fertilisers. | 23. 1.1957 | 23.10.1958 | |
| 158 | Aid to less developed areas. | 12. 5.1958 | 23.10.1958 | 5. 5.1959 | |||||
| 159 | Development of Africa. | 12. 5.1958 | 23.10.1958 | 5. 5.1959 | |||||
| 162 | Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the event of Armed Conflict. | 12. 5.1958 | 23.10.1958 | 16. 1.1959 | 5. 5.1959 | 2 | |||
| 163 | International Agreement on the importation of materials of an educational, scientific and cultural character. | 12. 5.1958 | 23.10.1958 | 2 | |||||
| 168 | Transmission to the national Parliaments of the decisions taken b y the Committee of Ministers | 23.10.1958 | — | ||||||
| 170 | Evacuation of European Refugees from the Far Eas t . | 23.10.1958 | 28. 1.1959 | 8 | |||||
| 171 | Second Progress Report of the Special Representative of the Council of Europe for National Refugees and Over-population. | 23.10.1958 | 4 | ||||||
| 178 | Improvements to be made to the machinery of the Council of | 23.10.1958 | — | ||||||
| 179 | Maintenance allowances for children.. | 23.10.1958 | 28. 1.1959 | 7 | |||||
| 181 | Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease. | 23.10.1958 | 28. 1.1959 | 5. 5.1959 | 2 | ||||
| 182 | Production and Marketing of vine products and spirits in Europe. | 23.10.1958 | 1 | ||||||
| 183 | Es tablishment of the European Court of Huma n Right s . | 23.10.1958 | 28. 1.1959 | 7 | |||||
| 184 | Situation in Central and Eastern Europe. | 23.10.1958 | 3 | ||||||
| 186 | European Economic Association (Free Trade Area). | 23.10.1958 | 6 | ||||||
| 187 | Reply to the First Report of the European Nuclear Energy Agency of 2 the 0 . E. E. C. to the Consultative Assembly. | 23.10.1958 | — | ||||||
| 188 | Hungarian refugees in Austria who wish to settle in a member country 2 8 . 1 . 1 9 59 7 of the Council of Europe.. | 28. 1.1959 | 7 | ||||||
| 189 | Third Progress Report of the Special Representative of the Council of 2 8 . 1 . 1 9 59 1 2 Europe for National Refugees and Over-population. | 28. 1.1959 | 5. 5.1959 | 12 | |||||
| 191 | European Conference of Local Authorities. | 28. 1.1959 | |||||||
| 192 | Simplification of frontier formalities. | 28. 1.1959 | 5. 5.1959 | 9 | |||||
| 193 | Reply to the Tenth Annual Report of 0 . E. E. C. | 5. 5.1959 | — | ||||||
| 194 | Nationality of children of stateless persons. | 4. 5.1959 | 1 | ||||||
| 196 | Ratification of the Convention on the recognition and enforcement of 5. 5 . 1 9 59 3 orders on maintenance allowances for children. | 5. 5.1959 | 3 | ||||||
| 197 | Participation of the Council of Europe in the World Refugee Year | 5. 5.1959 | 4 | ||||||
| 202 | European Economic Association. | 5. 5 . 1959 | 2 | ||||||
| Carried forward | 103 | ||||||||
| Brought forward | 103 | ||||||||
| B. RESOLUTIONS | |||||||||
| 140 | Calling upon every European municipality to give the name "Europe" to public places. | 21.11.1957 | (5) - | ||||||
| 146 | Reply t o the Fourth Report of the European Conference of Ministers 12. 5.1958 (2) 1 of Transport. | 12. 5.1958 | 23.10.1958 | 28. 1.1959 | (2) 1 | ||||
| 155 | ProWem of Berlin. | 28. 1.1959 | 1 | ||||||
| 161 | Problem of refugees from the Soviet Zone of Germany. | 28. 1.1959 | 1 | ||||||
| 163 | Financial and moral support for the Cultural Fund of the Council of 28. 1.1959 1 Europe. | 28. 1.1959 | 1 | ||||||
| Action taken by the Committee of Ministers on Recommendations of the Assembly. | 24. 2.1959 | 22.1.1958 | — | ||||||
| 165 | East - West Relations. | 5. 5.1959 | 1 | ||||||
| 166 | 5. 5.1959 1 166 Reply to the Fifth Annual Report of t h e European Conference of Minis5. 5.1959 11 ters of Transport | 5. 5.1959 | 11 | ||||||
| 167 | Participation of the Council of Europe in the World Refugee Year Ratification of Council of Europe conventions. | 5. 5.1959 | 2 | ||||||
| 168 | Future prospects of co-operation within the ambit of the Council Europe. | 5. 5.1959 | 1 | ||||||
| 169 | Perspect ives et avenir de la coopérat ion au sein du Conseil de l 'Europe. | transmitted in national languages different dates | — | ||||||
| C. OPINIONS | |||||||||
| 26 | Relations between the Council of Europe and 0 . E. E. C. | 21.11.1957 | (8) 7 | ||||||
| 29 | Draft European Convention on Compulsory Insurance against Civil Liability in respect of Motor Vehicles. | 23.10.1958 | 4 | ||||||
| 30 | Draft European Convention on Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters | 28. 1.1959 | 3 | ||||||
| D. ORDERS OF THE ASSEMBLY | |||||||||
| 144 | Voluntary contributions of member countries to the Cultural Fund of the Council of Europe. | 5. 5.1959 | 2 | ||||||
| Total | 138 |