European co-operation in the 1980s (General policy of the Council of Europe)

Order 414 (1982)

Author(s):

Parliamentary Assembly

Origin

Assembly debate on 6 and 7 October 1982 (19th and 20th Sittings) (see Doc. 4949, report of the Political Affairs Committee). Text adopted by the Assembly on 7 October 1982 (20th Sitting).

Thesaurus

The Assembly,

1. Recalling the position it adopted in the past with regard to European co-operation and its institutional aspects, particularly Recommendation 793 (1976), on the Tindemans report and the Council of Europe, and Resolution 693 (1979), on direct elections to the European Parliament and the role of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe ;

2. Following with interest current initiatives within the European Community, particularly the German-Italian initiative for the drafting of an Act on European Union and the work of the Committee on Institutional Affairs of the European Parliament ;

3. Bearing in mind the report of its Political Affairs Committee (Doc. 4949) and the debate held following its presentation to the Assembly on 6 and 7 October 1982, as well as the statement made to the Assembly by the Chairman-in-Office of the Committee of Ministers on 6 October 1982,

4. Instructs its Political Affairs Committee to develop detailed proposals and report back by April 1983, having undertaken the necessary consultations with the Committee of Ministers, with the Assembly committees responsible for following the intergovernmental work of the Council of Europe's eight priority fields reflected in the Work Programme, and with political authorities at national and European level, bearing in mind the guidelines set out in the appendix to this order, and, if necessary, to set up a sub-committee for this purpose.

Appendix

1. First and foremost, the Council of Europe must, within the limits of its possibilities, meet the obligations imposed by service to the peoples of democratic Europe, whose expectations, hopes and fears set new challenges to which the organisation must be ready to respond.

2. Co-operation in democratic Europe must be understood as a coherent whole, within which participating states, through the various international organisations created for the purpose, seek greater unity, based, in the case of the Council of Europe, on the common ideals enshrined in its Statute.

3. All European organisations should be mindful, when programming their activities, of the need for greater effectiveness, implying respect for the principle of complementarity, concentrating on issues to which they are best suited by their jurisdiction and the means at their disposal.

4. The possibilities of further developing existing mechanisms of communication between the organisations should be examined. It is clear that European co-operation achieved among the Ten, in the political field, as in other fields, would have greater weight if, whenever appropriate, it could be extended beyond the Ten, for the benefit of democratic Europe as a whole.

5. While the European Community is bound to extend co-operation in order to pursue the aims of the Treaties of Rome and Paris more effectively and to reinforce its cohesion, the Council of Europe should continue to play a leading role in the fields of cultural co-operation, human rights and legal harmonisation, in view of the fundamental unity of approach of all democratic Europe in these matters, also bearing in mind the artificiality of the division of Europe into East and West where culture is concerned.

6. It is essential to improve communications, especially on political issues, between the Assembly and the Committee of Ministers.

7. The first beneficiaries of the Council of Europe's action should be its member states, without, however, neglecting the wider responsibilities incumbent upon the world's largest grouping of pluralist parliamentary democracies.