1. The Committee of Ministers has carefully
examined Parliamentary Assembly Recommendation 2012 (2013) on “Reinforcing
the selection processes for experts of key Council of Europe human
rights monitoring mechanisms”, which it has forwarded to the monitoring
bodies concerned.Note
2. The Committee of Ministers shares the Assembly’s observations
on the importance, for the Council of Europe’s activities, of having
monitoring mechanisms whose members have the highest qualifications
required in their respective fields of expertise and who also demonstrate
the independence and impartiality which are essential to the exercise
of their duties.
3. The Committee of Ministers takes note of the Assembly’s proposed
general minimum standards. More particularly:
with regard to the proposal to limit the duration of the
experts’ terms of office (point 5.1 of Resolution 1923 (2013) to
which Recommendation 2012 (2013) refers), the Committee of Ministers
acknowledges that it would be desirable to ensure a fair balance
between the necessary renewal of the monitoring mechanisms and preserving
institutional memory. However, harmonising existing rules would
be difficult, not least because of the different legal nature of
the instruments setting forth the duration and renewal of the terms
of office of the members of the monitoring mechanisms: while in
some cases, these rules are laid down in a Committee of Ministers’
resolution (ECRI for example), the rules for others are set out
in the treaty establishing the mechanism itself (for example, the
Committee of Experts on the European Charter for Regional or Minority
Languages). In this connection, it should be pointed out that the
Committee of Ministers is currently engaged in work to introduce
a limitation on the terms of office of the ECRI experts;
with regard to the eligibility criteria referred to in
point 5.2 of Resolution 1923 (2013), the Committee of Ministers
notes that the current provisions already seek to ensure that the
persons selected demonstrate a high level of competence, independence,
impartiality and integrity and that they should make themselves
available to discharge their duties effectively. In practice, the
Committee of Ministers also takes account of the objective requirements
referred to by the Assembly, in order to ensure the diversity of
the composition of the monitoring mechanisms;
the Committee of Ministers shares the view of the Assembly
on the desirability of avoiding situations of real or perceived
conflicts of interest (point 5.3 of Resolution 1923 (2013)). The
practice it has developed in this area is designed to prevent such
situations;
with regard to national selection procedures, the Committee
of Ministers refers to the principle of subsidiarity, while sharing
the Assembly’s view that those procedures should be transparent
and open. In this connection, States could usefully draw on the
Committee of Ministers’ Guidelines for the selection of candidates
for the position of judge at the European Court of Human Rights
(adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 28 March 2012, at the
1138th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies);
lastly, with regard to consulting the monitoring bodies
themselves, the Committee of Ministers draws attention to the fact
that the Bureau of the CPT and the ECSR provide it, informally,
with their views on the candidates for election to these bodies.
The practice of the Committee of Ministers regarding the other monitoring
bodies is to ask, when it deems it appropriate, for the latter to
provide it with objective information relating to their needs in
terms of competences, professions, gender equality, etc.
4. Finally, the Committee of Ministers would points out that
it is continuing discussions, in its Rapporteur Group on Human Rights
(GR-H), on improving, where appropriate, the selection procedures
for the members of the Organisation’s different monitoring mechanisms.
