In an unprecedented context of political, legal and international transformations in Europe, marked by the war of aggression waged by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the Assembly called on member States “to invest sufficient additional resources into the Organisation to allow it to deliver the results which the Reykjavik Summit has indicated”.
Given the depth of the priorities set by the leaders of the member States at the 4th Summit, the Council of Europe should be granted resources that are commensurate with the level of member States’ political ambition for the Organisation, the parliamentarians underlined, adopting an opinion on the budgets and priorities of the Council of Europe for the period 2024-2027, based on the report by Ingjerd Schou (Norway, EPP/CD).
The adopted opinion states that, to effectively deliver on the Summit outcomes, “the Organisation’s resources should be increased over and above the zero real growth perspective”.
While supporting efforts to modernise and reform the working methods and governance of the Council of Europe – including its own initiatives for digital modernisation – the Assembly believes that the need to match resources to ambition must remain at the forefront of the discussions in the Committee of Ministers during the 2024-2027 budgetary process.