Increase of the number of seats of the Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by member states of the Council of Europe (Monitoring Committee)
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- (see Doc. 9984, report of the Committee on Rules of Procedure and Immunities, rapporteur: Mr Einarsson). Text adopted by the Standing Committee, acting on behalf of the Assembly, on 25 November 2003
- Thesaurus
1. The Parliamentary Assembly refers to Order No. 585 (2003) on the progress of the Assembly’s monitoring procedure as well as to the report on which it is based (
Doc. 9651).
2. It recalls that when the Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (Monitoring Committee) was set up in 1997 it was given the same number of seats as the larger Assembly committees which were then operational. Furthermore, it refers to Assembly
Resolution 1220 (2000) on the reform of the Assembly’s working methods and its committee structure. At the time, the number of members of the Assembly’s large committees, including the Monitoring Committee, rose from 66 to 76.
3. The Assembly further recalls that, unlike other Assembly committees, members of the Monitoring Committee are nominated by the Bureau of the Assembly on the basis of the candidatures proposed by the political groups (Rule 43, paragraph 3 of the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure) and are submitted to the Assembly for ratification. Therefore, the number of seats on the Monitoring Committee does not automatically increase with the accession of new member states to the Council of Europe. This requires a specific decision of the Bureau of the Assembly. The Assembly notes that the membership of the Monitoring Committee has not increased since 2001.
4. The Assembly supports the proposal in Order No. 585 to bring into line the number of seats on the Monitoring Committee with that of the Assembly’s other large committees, which currently amounts to 82.
5. It consequently decides:
5.1 to replace in Rule 43, paragraph 1, point 10 of the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure the words “(76 seats)” by “(82 seats)” and in Rule 43, paragraph 3 the words “76 members” by “82 members”;
5.2 to amend or update correspondingly the number of members of the Monitoring Committee mentioned in the ancillary texts of the Rules of Procedure.
6. Furthermore, the Assembly invites the Bureau of the Assembly to discuss the consequences of the accession of new member states to the Council of Europe for the number of seats of all Assembly committees (including the Monitoring Committee) and to inform the Assembly of any decisions taken by means of the Progress Report of the Bureau and the Standing Committee.
