Council of Europe – Test Yourself

The judges are elected by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from a shortlist of three candidates, proposed by each State, for a non-renewable term of nine years.

Democracy and the rule of law are inseparably linked and provide the foundation for all effective human rights protection.

Cases can only be brought before the European Court of Human Rights after all domestic remedies have been exhausted, i.e. when the highest domestic court has delivered a judgment.

Churchill's speech at the University of Zurich in 1946 was considered ground-breaking for the further development of a united Europe: "Our constant aim must be to build and fortify the strength of the United Nations Organization. Under and within that world concept we must re-create the European Family in a regional structure called, it may be, the United States of Europe. And the first practical step would be to form a Council of Europe."

Contrary to the United Nations' system, no Council of Europe member state has veto power.
--
The ten founding members are: Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The four largest financial contributors are: Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Convinced, that Europe was in need of a uniting symbol, the Council of Europe adopted the European flag in 1955. In 1985, a predecessor organisation of today's European Union (EU) adopted the flag as well.

The European Court of Human Rights is the Council of Europe's most important instrument. As such, it gets less than 1/3 of the organisation's annual ordinary budget 2024 of € 299 million.

The Council of Europe's European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) prohibits certain acts and guarantees certain rights. Among the latter are the right to life (Article 2) and the right to liberty and security (Article 5).

The Council of Europe is not only the continents largest but also its oldest intergovernmental organisation for human rights. 1973 is the founding year of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE); 1993 that of the European Union in its current form.

All 47 member states of the Council of Europe have signed the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)

Eurimages, the Council of Europe's European Cinema Support Fund, was founded in 1989. It supports feature films, documentaries and animations which have at least two co-producers from different member states of the fund.

The Council of Europe's Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence - that is the Istanbul Convention's official name - is named after the place it was opened for signature in 2014. Turkey has been a member of the Council of Europe since 1949, the organisation's founding year. There is a Council of Europe convention on the protection of archaeological heritage called the Valletta Convention.

By joining the Council of Europe, member states accept the terms stipulated in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and put themselves under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights.

1972, Herbert von Karajan arranged three different instrumental versions of the main theme from the last movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 as a European anthem for the Council of Europe. In 1985, a predecessor organisation of today's European Union (EU) adopted the anthem as well.

The Venice Commission's official name is "European Commission for Democracy through Law". It was created by the Council of Europe in 1990 to provide emergency constitutional aid to Eastern European states in transition. Today, the Venice Commission - who is named after the Italian city where it holds its plenary meetings - is one of Europe’s leading advisory bodies for legal and constitutional matters.

The founding states of the Council of Europe created the ECHR in order to prevent atrocities like the ones committed during the Second World War from ever happening again and at the same time promote the development of democracy in Europe and thereby bring lasting peace to the continent.

In 1951, Germany's chancellor and foreign minister Adenauer said in a speech at the Council of Europe: "It is of great significance for the political development of Europe that here, in the organs of the Council of Europe, we have a platform on which the representatives of Europe meet regularly, discuss their worries and anxieties, their desires and their hopes, a platform where they try to establish common criteria for evaluating their requirements, and where, in general, they co-operate with one another in a spirit of fairness and of good neighbourliness. In other words, here we find an expression of the European conscience."

The Council of Europe's working languages are English and French, but the European Court of Human Rights accepts applications in any official language spoken in a Council of Europe member state and even handwritten applications are accepted.

Marija Pejčinović Burić was Croatia's incumbent Foreign Minister when she was elected Secretary General of the Council of Europe in 2019.

Maria Tsirli is the European Court of Human Rights' Registrar; Dunja Mijatović was the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights (2018-2024). Ursula von der Leyen is the President of the European Commission of the European Union.

All 27 member states of the European Union (EU) are members of the Council of Europe as well and have signed the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The Russian Federation was expelled from the Council of Europe with immediate effect in March 2022 after 26 years of membership, due to its war on Ukraine - an unprecedented event in the organisation's long history.

The military junta in Greece (1967-1974) pre-empted expulsion in 1969 by withdrawing from membership. Turkey was temporarily deprived of its voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly after the military coup in 1980.

Choosing Strassburg as the seat of the Council of Europe in 1949 had a lot of symbolic meaning since the city - as well as the entire French border region of Alsace - perfectly mirrored the turbulent history of the whole continent.

In 1972, the Council of Europe adopted an instrumental version of the main theme of the last movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 as its anthem. The lyrics in the original version - "Ode of Joy" - had been taken from a poem by German poet Friedrich Schiller. In 1985, the European anthem was adopted by a predecessor of today's European Union.

The Co-operation Group to Combat Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in Drugs (Pompidou Group) was founded in 1971 at the initiative of the late French president Georges Pompidou.